
Class ^J^SjZ^J^y- 
CopyrightN iSAL^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



ORATIONS and 

ADDRESSES 



...BY... 

RICHARD SALTER STORRS, D.D., LL.D. 

Author of " The Divine Origin of Christianity Indicated 
by its Historical Effects," etc. 






BOSTON 


TOe flMlarfm press 


CHICAGO 



,55" 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Receives 

JUL 8 1903 

3 Copyright Entry 

class a- XXc. No 

J" 3 & I £ 

COPY B. 



Copyright, 1 90 1 ,' 
THE PILGRIM PRESS 



Publishers' Note 



Most of the following orations and addresses were 
separately published soon after they were delivered, 
but several of them are now out of print. The emi- 
nence of the late Dr. Storrs as an orator upon special 
occasions has_in the judgment of the publishers made 
it desirable to bring together in a single volume the 
most important of his written discourses. Others, 
which made an even deeper impression on the audi- 
ences which listened to them, like the two lectures on 
" The Ottoman and the Muscovite — Their long Duel," 
and the lecture on " European Libraries," were deliv- 
ered from notes only, and cannot be reproduced. 

The lecture on " Chrysostom " has never before ap- 
peared in print. Two or three briefer speeches are 
added from stenographic reports, as examples of his 
more informal and popular manner. 



Contents 



i 

Abraham Lincoln 1 

II 
The Early American Spirit and the Genesis of It 63 

HI 

The Declaration op Independence and the Effects 
of It 121 

IY 
The Recognition of the Supernatural in Letters 
and in Life 195 

V 

John Wycliffe and the First English Bible . . . 245 

YI 

The New York and Brooklyn Bridge 315 

YII 

Manliness in the Scholar 343 

5 



6 CONTENTS 

Till 

The Broader Range and Outlook of Modern Col- 
lege Training 369 

IX 

The Puritan Spirit 409 

X 

The Sources and Guarantees op National Progress, 457 

XI 

John op Antioch (Chrysostom) the Great Preacher 
op the Fourth Century 507 

XII 

Commerce an Educator op Nations 555 

XIII 
Forefathers' Day 567 

XIY 

Consolidation of Brooklyn with New York . . .579 



I 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



An Oration delivered at Brooklyn, N. Y., June 1, 1865, at the re- 
quest of the War Fund Committee. 



I 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Ladies and Gentlemen : 

In February, 1861, amid the chills and sleet of the 
unfinished winter, and while the gloom of a prescient 
fear, more oppressive than of any physical season, over- 
shadowed the hearts of the thoughtful and troubled 
American people, a number of persons, with one quaint, 
homely figure in the midst of them, took their de- 
parture from Springfield, Illinois, to proceed by grad- 
ual stages to Washington. Neighbors and friends 
were hurriedly assembled to witness the departure ; 
and a few simple and touching words of greeting and 
farewell were addressed to them by him who was cen- 
tral in the group, and whose kindly face and earnest 
voice had there, for twenty-four years, been familiar. 

Other assemblages, hastily convened, of personal ac- 
quaintances and political friends, with here and there 
some generous or curious political opponents, were 
afterward encountered, as the company proceeded 
from city to city, along the railways which then as now 
overlay and defined their winding route. At Buffalo, 
Albany, New York, Philadelphia, and at other points, 
men came together to see and hear, some to welcome, 
and some as well to criticise or to warn, the man to 
whom, by the voice of a plurality of his fellow-country- 
men, the conduct of the government for four years to 
come had been committed. There was much curiosity 

9 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

to be satisfied concerning him. There was a natural 
eagerness to hear what he might say, that involved 
any pithy or pregnant suggestion as to what his course 
was likely to be. But those who remembered the great 
convocations which in other years had greeted the 
chieftains in statesmanship as they made their progress 
through the country, could not but contrast with the 
numbers and enthusiasm of such previous assemblages, 
the meagerness and the dulness of those now con- 
vened. And when at last the tall, uncouth, but 
dominant figure which had been central in these as- 
semblages disappeared from sight at the capital of 
Pennsylvania, to reappear suddenly in a hotel at "Wash- 
ington, there was with a few a feeling of relief that 
suspense was over, and he was safely housed at the 
Capital ; there was with many a feeling of shame that 
any such precautionary privacy should have been 
deemed to be needful, and that the small degree of 
state till then maintained should have been so wholly 
and abruptly relinquished before he had reached his 
final goal. 

Four crowded and fateful years have passed, during 
which the nation for the first time in its history has 
breasted the shock and tasted the bitterness of a fierce 
civil war ; during which a half -million of men have 
fallen, dead or maimed, in skirmish and in battle; 
during which a hundred and fifty thousand households 
have been shrouded in the gloom that rises only from 
the grave of the beloved; during which arbitrary 
measures and policies, unknown to our previous history, 
have been authorized and enforced ; and during which 
seasons of clamorous expectation and unjustified hope, 
have been followed by others of utter despondency, 

10 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

and the passionate reproaches of which this is the 
parent, — four years have passed, and another company 
starts from Washington, to bear back to the quiet and 
distant Springfield all that remains of that form now 
prostrate, that face and eye now sealed and sightless. 

Amid the shining April days, while springing grass 
and greening boughs proclaim that summer draweth 
nigh, they leave the Capital — which never before has 
been so shaken with pain and grief and righteous rage 
— they take the same route which he had traversed 
when coming in life to his high place, and bear him 
forever from the scene of his eventful sway. And as 
they go, the great capitals of the land welcome with 
such demonstrations of honor as no preceding ex- 
perience has witnessed, the shrunken, discolored and 
pulseless frame. The city through which he passed 
before in a sheltering privacy, now crowds tumultuous, 
in tearful affection, around his bier. The great me- 
tropolis — whose mob then hated him, the leaders of 
whose fashion turned from him with contempt, and 
whose authorities sought to insult him — now pours 
from every street and lane, the intent and sad proces- 
sion of his mourners. Its whole business is suspended ; 
its houses are hung, from base to roof, with funeral 
weeds ; its pavements are thronged with silent, patient, 
unmoving crowds; its windows gleam with pallid 
faces ; as through the hushed expectant avenues winds, 
hour by hour, while bells are tolling and minute-guns 
with measured boom are counting the instants, that 
vast, unreckoned, unparalleled procession. 

Not capitals only, but States themselves, become his 
mourners. Churches put off their Easter emblems, to 
hide pillar and wall and arch in sable woe. Each rail- 

11 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

way is made a via dolorosa. The spontaneous homage 
of millions is offered, through the uncovered head, the 
crape, the wreath, through all the somber insignia of 
grief, as the train with its precious burden speeds. 
The country shrouds its weeping face, and all the 
blooms of spring around can bring no flush to its 
changed countenance ; the song and sparkle, and the 
sweet impulse of which the very air is full, can stir no 
pulse of gladness or of hope, while still that spectacle 
haunts its gaze. For over every loyal heart there 
broods a sorrow as if the most revered had fallen ; as 
if the shock of personal bereavement had smitten, 
separately every household. 

It is to give the reason of this change that we are 
gathered here to-day. It is to tell why this amazing 
contrast appears ; which would be yet incredible to 
us, if our eyes had not seen it, if freshest memories did 
not to-day remind us of it. 

Nay, not of this only must we give explanation. 
When Abraham Lincoln left his home for that still re- 
cent journey to Washington, his name was only known 
to his countrymen through its association with late and 
local political discussions. It was utterly unknown, 
except as it appeared on the ballots of those who had 
chosen him President, to the other civilized peoples of 
the world. And when their eyes were unexpectedly 
turned to him, they saw in him only a village attorney, 
who had hardly before been responsibly associated 
with great affairs, whom his friends believed to be 
honest and sagacious, but whom his opponents described 
as a rough rail-splitter, of humble origin, of no early 
advantages, without experience, without signal ca- 
pacity, and more remarkable than for anything else 

12 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

for his fondness for coarse and pungent jokes. It was 
therefore with a natural and utter indifference that the 
multitudes heard his unmusical name. It was with a 
smug self-satisfaction that the aristocratic leaders of 
opinion, in England and on the Continent, pointed to 
the election of such a man to administer the govern- 
ment at a critical time, as the final condemnation of 
democratic institutions. And it was with a quick and 
rational anxiety that even educated liberals in Great 
Britain and France rehearsed what they heard that 
was favorable to him, and awaited the first indications 
of his policy. 

This was only four years ago. And now, from the 
entire civilized world arises the chorus of respect for 
his powers, of admiration for his character, of horror 
and grief at his untimely end. No other American 
name since Washington's has become so familiar, or 
has won such esteem, among the progressive peoples of 
Europe. It is henceforth a name to charm with, in 
Italy and in England, on the boulevards of Paris, in 
the studies of Germany, and among the precipitous 
passes of the Alps. The presses and the men that once 
made shifty apologies for him, have honored him for 
years as one of the leading statesmen of the world. 
Even the papers which month after month insulted 
him without stint, now eagerly applaud his prudence, 
his fortitude, his commanding ability. The English 
Punch, whose ridicule was so bitter that it seemed to 
have in it a personal malice, confesses its error, and 
atones for its jeers in lofty and pathetic lines. And 
with the voices of eulogy and homage rising from his 
still sorrowing countrymen, — rising not only from the 
millions he has ruled, and the other millions whom he 

13 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

has emancipated, but even from the impoverished 
States over whose acres his armies swept, and whose 
most practised and crafty commanders his patient wis- 
dom utterly defeated, — with these rise also, in kindred 
homage, the voices of all the intelligent leaders of 
opinions and affairs throughout Christendom. Par- 
liaments, as well as peoples, bring their tribute to his 
memory. The halls of national assemblies are draped 
in sad commemoration of his worth and of his death. 
And debates are suspended, and diplomacy waits, while 
emperors and queens clasp hands with us before his 
bier. 

It is one of the strangest contrasts in history ; and it 
is of this contrast, as well as of the other, that we to- 
day are to give explanation. The phenomenon is 
astonishing. It demands at our hands an adequate 
solution. But that solution is not difficult to find. 

A singularly critical and eminent position, singularly 
improved ; immense, and almost unparalleled responsi- 
bilities, modestly assumed, and with rare capacity and 
a rarer patience and magnanimity fulfilled : — here is 
the key to this strangest sequence. The only eulogy 
that need be pronounced on him is that which sets just 
this before us. 

Observe, first, his Position : 

Nations are more and more plainly every year the 
grand, organized, almost personal Powers, to whom is 
committed the future of the world. With the steady 
advances of civilization, individuals are comparatively 
less influential over the opinion and action of mankind, 
except as they affect the nation they are part of. But 
the nation itself becomes every year a mightier pres- 
ence, a more distinct, efficient actor, amid the system 

14 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of allied peoples. And to those which fill with their 
institutions, and outline with their boundaries, the map 
of Christendom, is the moulding of the destinies of 
mankind entrusted. 

Their origin is explained, and shown to be not acci- 
dental but providential, as we look at them from this 
point. Slowly emerging, like the heads of continents, 
from the waste chaos of the earlier centuries, each one 
has been unfolded, all have been arranged, on an 
orderly plan ; a plan that contemplates results so vast 
that we even yet can scarcely predict them. It is not 
topography, climate, soil, it is not altogether the kin- 
ship of blood, it is God, in his eternal wisdom, who 
has set these nations in their places, and with divine 
prescience and patience of skill has nursed and nurtured 
their tiny germs, has succored their growth, and has 
built them to their majestic strength, that, through 
their final combined might, his plans may be realized. 

The same thought interprets the permanence of these 
nations ; the constantly increasing unity of each within 
itself, the sharper lines that discriminate each from 
every other. The tendency of our times, with all the 
advance of individual liberty which has prominently 
marked them, is not toward the disintegration of em- 
pires, but toward their more thorough organization, 
their more profound internal oneness. And while 
forms of government, throughout Europe for example, 
have been subject to sudden and violent mutations 
during the two-thirds now elapsed of the present cen- 
tury, it is a fact full of significance that none of its 
great national organisms has been destroyed; that 
none of them has been seriously changed in its boun- 
daries or impaired in its strength. The most impor- 

15 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

tant changes among them have been the increased 
strength of Prussia, and the emerging into substantive 
existence of the kingdom of Italy. The progress of 
free thought within their boundaries has not dissolved 
but has only developed them. The progress of inven- 
tion, overleaping those boundaries and making neigh- 
bors of distant peoples, has not obliterated or even ob- 
scured the historic lines that stand between them. 
The centripetal force within each has the mastery; and 
in its more intimate self -centered coherence each stands 
more clearly apart from the rest. The public life in- 
corporated in it, — from whatsoever ancestry derived, by 
whatsoever influences trained, through whatsoever ex- 
perience developed, and in whatsoever legislations, let- 
ters, or arts revealed, — maintains its identity, and only 
perfects its force, and is prepared always for a larger 
impression upon the progress and culture of the world. 
Yet while this development within each is going on, 
the equilibrium of all is only thereby more firmly es- 
tablished, and the relations between them become vital 
and constant. Diplomatic alliances only tardily and 
partly represent the progress of their moral sympathies. 
Because it is separate, each acts on the others with 
which it is allied, with more freedom, directness, and 
positive force. It acts and reacts. It gives and it 
gathers. It makes its own peculiar contributions, of 
art, thought, commercial exchange, moral power ; and 
it receives those which are brought to it in return. 
And through this continual reciprocity, more vital 
than treaties, more effective than international con- 
gresses, each assists the progress of every other, and 
all work together, whether consciously or not, toward 
general results. 

16 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Into the ultimate power of Christendom goes there- 
fore a force derived in part from every people. The 
influence of each is made cosmopolitan. And it be- 
comes more evident constantly that not by individuals, 
but by these nations,;— so separate yet associated, al- 
ways more unlike, but always also more intimately al- 
lied, — is gradually to be reared the world-wide struc- 
ture of a universal civilization ; that as the great Per- 
sons of the continents and the ages, they are to elab- 
orate the welfare of mankind, and accomplish His 
plans who is the ruler and architect of all. 

There is nothing that more clearly sets God before 
us in the scope of his designs, that more vividly un- 
folds the significance of history, that more sublimely 
impresses on our thoughts the grandeur of the times 
in which we live, than this view of nations, as the 
ever-renewed and cooperative workers, whose power 
and patience are to build up the future. The earth is 
illustrious through their presence upon it. The future 
is secure through the mighty concurrence with which 
they march toward it. And the' brain that swings 
yonder suns into systems is not so unsearchable as that 
which orders this mighty plan. 

And now among these vast, historic, almost personal 
Powers, it is not presumptuous or idle to feel that this 
of which we ourselves are part, is to have a special 
and an eminent place. We feel it instinctively. An 
audible undertone in European society shows the world 
aware of it. » 

Placed on a continent where it stands by itself, and 
from which its influence passes continually, across both 
oceans, to affect all peoples whom commerce reaches, 
all tribes indeed whose languages are known ; founded 

B 17 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

at the beginning, as, Chatham said, "upon ideas of 
liberty," and prepared by the very blood that went 
into it, as well as by its subsequent training, to illus- 
trate the capacity of Christianized men to organize and 
maintain a democratic autonomy ; with a vast force of 
thought, will, feeling, faith, of all that makes the in- 
tensest moral life of a nation, inherited by it, and con- 
tinually nourished by scho6ls, presses, churches, homes, 
by all the labors it has had to perform, and all the 
hopes that have strengthened its heart, — it cannot be 
but that this nation shall affect with still increasing 
power the other civilized peoples of the earth. In a 
degree it does this already ; and when its energies 
shall cease to be concentrated, as they hitherto have 
been, on the preparation of the country itself for its 
habitation, and the swift and mighty mastery of its 
riches, and on the fashioning and the upbuilding of its 
own institutions, — when the educational influences that 
mould it shall have come to their fruition, and the 
spirit of the nation shall be finally formed and declared, 
— it must pour abroad, through constant channels, an 
infinite influence. 

Either with distrust, then, anxiety, fear, or with 
confidence, affection, expectation, the thoughtful 
minds throughout the world must look upon the peo- 
ple here established : whose existence is so recent, its 
development so rapid, its history so remarkable, and 
whose future hitherto has seemed so uncertain. It is not 
, one fact, or another, by itself, that secures this inter- 
est of the civilized world in our Republic. The whole 
drift of civilization makes it inevitable. For good or 
for evil there is here a power that must affect the en- 
tire system of associated nations, to make or mar the 

18 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

future they are building. And yonder ocean may as 
easily be withdrawn from the sight of our eyes, the 
continent itself may as easily be obliterated from the 
map of the world, as the sense of the connection of 
the development of this people with the destinies of 
the race be stricken from our minds, or from the gen- 
eral judgment of Christendom. 

When, then, a terrific crisis suddenly appeared in our 
public experience — when a wide-sweeping and passion- 
ate rebellion threatened to become a complete revolu- 
tion, to split the nation into fragments, and to change 
the course of its development forever — it was not 
wonderful, it was only inevitable, that more than by 
any other event of modern times the thoughts of 
mankind should be occupied with it ; that here not 
only but all abroad it should be felt that the palpable 
leaves of destiny were turning ; that forces were 
evolved than which none others more portentous had 
broken upon the world since the modern nations of 
Europe were born. It was inevitable that with di- 
verse hopes and opposite predictions not Americans 
only but the peoples of Christendom should look to 
see what the issue was to be. 

No man on this continent, therefore, since Washing- 
ton's day, has had such room as was given to him 
whose death we mourn, to manifest all of power and 
character which he possessed ; to manifest this to the 
eyes of the nation, to the eyes of mankind. No other 
man has had the chance to so utterly wreck himself 
and bury his name in an absolute ignominy amid the 
sinking fortunes of his country. And, on the other 
hand, to no other man has been given the opportunity 
to make for himself a place forever in the inmost heart 

19 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

of the nation which he saved ; to make for himself a 
world-wide fame ; to touch the centuries still to come, 
and gild their skies with higher splendor. And it is 
because he proved himself equal to the critical, provi- 
dential, unparalleled position, — because he so bore him- 
self in his grand office that all men saw him a man to 
be loved, a statesman to be trusted, a patriot to be fol- 
lowed through darkest perils without dismay, — there- 
fore it is that eulogies now make the continents vocal ; 
that those eulogies take the poetic form which only 
intensity of feeling produces; and that one of the 
grandest names of the world is to be henceforth, while 
history continues, the plain, untitled, and recent name 
of Abraham Lincoln. 

So much for his Position. Observe now the per- 
sonal Character and Power which he brought to his 
office and the Work which he wrought in it. 

Of course the full exhibition of these would take vol- 
umes, not paragraphs, and be the occupation of months 
of leisure instead of a few hurrying hours. Yet we 
may notice the leading traits, and recognize briefly 
the more prominent powers of mind and will, by 
which he became so apt for his work ; and may 
glance, at least, at the principal features of the great 
work itself. 

It is an impulse of the heart with every one who 
speaks of him to delineate first his moral properties ; 
and though these may be dwelt upon so exclusively as 
to seem to involve an injurious forgetfulness of the 
great intellectual abilities he possessed, yet the course 
of discussion thus suggested is the one which every 
one still must take if he would not violently constrain 
and divert his own mental processes ; if he would not 

20 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

repulse the public heart. The moral, which should be 
supreme in every man, was so, to a degree almost un- 
exampled, in President Lincoln. It made the prime 
impression of the man on those who approached him. 
It shines most prominently before us to-day, through- 
out that crowded and turbulent history along whose 
dizzy paths he has led us. It will be spoken of first 
and most fondly wherever future American parents 
repeat his sayings, rehearse his traits, and tell to 
their children the story of his career. Of this 
then, first, we may, and we must, with propriety 
speak. 

And yet it is impossible to speak of it as we would, 
because it is impossible to comprise in words that sub- 
tile, essential spirit of character, which was paramount 
in him ; and because — when we analyze, as we say, 
such a character, and distribute its single though com- 
plex beauty into the traits which made it up — it is like 
fracturing the diamond to exhibit it ; it is like unbraid- 
ing the strand of light, to show the sunbeam's inmost 
splendor. So far, however, as any formula can ex- 
press what must, by virtue of its spiritual nature, elude 
the grasp and surpass the compass of verbal proposi- 
tions, it may be said that a deep, unselfish Sympathy 
with Men, a profound Conviction of the validity and 
authority of certain great principles of Equity and 
Liberty, and an abiding personal Faith in the over- 
ruling Providence of God, were the principal and per- 
manent constituent forces in the Character which he 
showed. 

The genesis of this, the influences by which it was 
rooted and formed in him, it must be left to the biog- 
rapher to unfold. The character itself, which these 

21 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

elements composed, is as distinct as it is also great ; 
and the memory of it will live forever. 

Wholly individual, utterly genuine, — so independent 
of outward circumstances that obscurity had not at all 
embittered it, and investiture with the vast preroga- 
tives of office only gave it new development through 
immenser opportunities, — it was the essential moral 
force on which the nation for four years hung, as on 
a very power of nature ; from which, more than from 
anything else, it has drawn its present stability and 
hope ; and by reason of which the death of him in 
whom it was revealed has thrilled with new and 
strange emotion the civilized world. 

His Sympathy with Men was shown not only in his 
singularly warm personal attachments, to his family 
and his friends, to all who for any considerable time 
were confidentially associated with him ; it was shown 
as well in that kindness to the poor, the sorrowful, the 
imperilled, with instances of which the journals of 
the country, for four years past, have been running 
over. The wearied, sick or wounded, soldier found 
always a friend in him as solicitous for his welfare as 
if he had been his kinsman by birth. The little chil- 
dren in the Home for the Destitute were touched by 
the tearful tenderness and dignity, the instructive 
clearness and the quickening playfulness, with which 
he addressed them. The poor freed people — who had 
escaped from the slavery through which his armies 
crushed their way, but had escaped to communities 
that seemed less friendly than those they had left, and 
had passed from a bondage which at least had given 
them shelter and food, to a liberty that threatened to 
doom them to idleness and to overwhelm them in an 

22 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

absolute want — it was not with ostentatious charity, 
it was with no splendid philanthropical theory, it was 
with a tender, welcoming respect, that he heard their 
story, examined their condition and opened the way 
for escape from their fears. 

After four years of incessant, bloody, desperate 
struggle, he entered Eichmond, with characteristic un- 
ostentation, — not at the head of marshalled armies, 
with banners advanced and trumpets sounding, but as 
a private gentleman, on foot, with an officer on one 
side, holding the hand of his boy on the other. An 
aged negro met him on the street, and said, with the 
tears streaming down his face, as he bowed low his un- 
covered head, " God bress you, Massa Lincoln ! " The 
President paused, raised his hat on the instant, and 
with a hearty " I thank you, sir," acknowledged with 
a bow the greeting. Instinctively he recognized the 
poorest as his peer, and the black man as his brother. 

On each of two days, in all his brief and burdened 
weeks, he gave some hours to receiving the petitions 
of those who sought from him any personal favor. 
He took upon himself, with glad alacrity, the labor of 
investigating claims for relief which had been always 
under other administrations, which should have been 
under his, referred at once to subordinate officers. He 
did it because he could not help it. His nature de- 
manded it ; and that nature could not be expelled with 
a pitchfork. No trophies won by legislators or gen- 
erals ever disturbed, for the tenth of a minute, his 
healthful slumbers. But the mere recollection of a 
case of suffering which he had not relieved, of an in- 
stance of anxiety which he had not soothed as quickly 
as he might, would keep him tossing for many hours 

23 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

on an unrestful bed. And it was not a burden, but 
always a relief to him, to turn from eminent public 
affairs to talk with the poor who sought his aid, and 
to bind up with assiduous skill the wounds of the sor- 
rowful. 

The same spirit was revealed, in a more unique 
exhibition, in his sympathetic regard for his opponents. 
He laughed at the jokes which were made about him- 
self ; was tolerant, to a degree before unexampled, of 
attacks on his policy ; and never took a particle of 
venom into his nature from all the virulent assaults 
that were made on him. While holding tenaciously 
to his own views and plans, he never failed to do 
generous justice to the reasons and the motives of 
those who combated them; to recognize in them 
wherever he could, and sometimes where none of his 
colleagues could, a patriotism as genuine as his own, 
and a purpose as true to secure and promote the gen- 
eral welfare. He talked with, reasoned with, wrote 
to them, in this spirit ; was not moved from his posi- 
tion of friendliness toward them by their misconcep- 
tions or their abuse; and never could believe them 
traitorous in their hearts till the overt act had com- 
pelled him to see it. 

Toward even those who had dangerously offended 
against the laws, he hardly could bring himself to 
adopt any course save one of the utmost clemency and 
gentleness. He pardoned with so much eagerness 
that one of his own cabinet officers declared that the 
power of pardoning should be taken from him. The 
military discipline of the army itself was more than 
once in danger of decay through his inability to order 
the final penalties inflicted on those who had incurred 

24 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

them ; and spies and traitors Avithin the Capital were 
shielded, more than was easily reconciled with the 
safety of the government, by his unwillingness to have 
them subjected to any harsh measures. 

Of course his sensibilities came gradually to be 
under the control of his judgment, while the counsels 
of others constrained him sometimes to a severity 
which he hated ; so that at length the order for the 
merited restraint or punishment of public offenders 
was frequently, though always reluctantly, ratified by 
him. But his sympathy with men, in whatever con- 
dition, of whatever opinions, in whatsoever wrongs in- 
volved, was so native and constant, and so controlling, 
that he was always not so much inclined as pre-deter- 
mined to the mildest and most generous theory possi- 
ble. And something of peril, as well as of promise, 
was involved to the public in this element of his 
nature. 

He would not admit that he was in danger of the 
very assassination by which at last his life was taken, 
and only yielded with a protest to the precautions 
which others felt bound to take for him ; because his 
own sympathy with men was so strong that he could 
not believe that any would meditate serious harm to 
him. The public policy of his administration was con- 
stantly in danger of being too tardy, lenient, pacific, 
toward those who were combined for deadly battle 
against the government, because he was so solicitous 
to win, so anxious to bless, and so reluctant sharply to 
strike. Sic semper tyrannis, shouted his wild, theat- 
ric assassin, as he leaped upon the stage — making the 
ancient motto of Yirginia a legend of shame forever- 
more. But no magistrate ever lived who had less of 

25 * 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

the tyrant in his natural or his habitual temper. In 
all the veins of all his frame no drop of unsympathetic 
blood found a channel. When retaliation seemed the 
only just policy for the government to adopt, to save 
its soldiers from being shot in cold blood, or being 
starved into idiocy, it was simply impossible for him 
to accept it. And if he had met the arch-conspirators 
face to face, — those who had racked and really en- 
larged the English vocabulary to get terms to express 
their hatred and disgust toward him individually, those 
who were striking with desperate blows at the na- 
tional existence, — it would have been hard for him not 
to greet them with open hand and a kindly welcome. 

The very element of sadness, which was so in- 
wrought with his mirthfulness and humor, and which 
will look out on coming generations through the pen- 
sive lines upon his face, and the light of his pathetic 
eyes, came into his spirit, or was constantly renewed 
there, through his sympathy with men, especially with 
the oppressed and the poor. He took upon himself 
the sorrows of others. He bent in extremest personal 
suffering under the blows that fell on his countrymen. 
And when the bloody rain of battle was sprinkling 
the trees and the sod of Yirginia, during successive 
dreary campaigns, his ■ inmost soul felt the baptism of 
it, and was sickened with grief. " I cannot bear it ! 
I cannot bear it ! " he said more than once, as the 
story was told him of the sacrifice required to secure 
some result. No glow, even of triumph, could expel 
from his eyes the tears occasioned by the suffering 
that had bought it. 

And yet through this native sympathy with men he 
gained a large part of his immense power over his 

26 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

country and his times. From it in part came, no 
doubt, the sublime temperateness of his spirit. He 
lived in times when a man without this must now 
and then have flamed into passion at the arrogant 
ferocity that taunted and smote him. But no man 
remembers an hour in his life when passion made 
his accents tremble. He hated slavery with a life- 
long abhorrence, and wrestled with it for four fierce 
years in deadly grapple ; and many men, not hating 
it more, not feeling it so much, had come not un- 
naturally to transfer to persons their wrath against 
the system, and had been embittered through their 
just indignation. He kept the utter sweetness of his 
spirit, as if he had been a child by the fireside. His 
blood was not heated in the desperate struggle ; and 
even conscience offended could not make him acrimo- 
nious. 

He gained another power through this sympathy 
with men. Not only by it did he come to be en- 
deared, so as no President preceding him had been, to 
the universal heart of the nation, to its women and 
children as well as its men ; not only did its rare vital 
force surpass our boundaries and make the humble 
abroad his friends ; — he came, by virtue of it in great 
measure, to be the Representative Man of the people. 
It brought him into spontaneous correspondence with 
the average thought and feeling of the country. He 
did not depend on witnesses and counselors. He 
" knew in himself " what the " plain people " wanted, 
whom he honored and believed in, to whose ranks he 
expected soon to return, and who, as he said, were 
willing and able to save the government if the gov- 
ernment would do its part indifferently well. 

27 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

Through a process imperceptible to himself, no 
doubt, in its methods and modes, but natural to his 
sympathetic constitution, he came to dwell in such ac- 
cord with the public — not with any one party, or any 
one set of leaders and thinkers, but with the collective 
spirit of the nation — that when he spoke it felt its 
thought articulated through him ; and his ultimate de- 
cision, on almost any question, announced and sealed 
the public judgment. 

The independence of his policy had its origin here. 
He was always ready to hear and consider any opin- 
ion. The most conservative, the most violently radi- 
cal, were equally at home with him. Yet the eloquent 
or ingenious advocates of a theory often found, to their 
surprise, that they had less influence over his counsels 
than over those of men whom they thought his supe- 
riors. The truth is, the entire public was his teacher. 
His nature drew, through secret ducts, the wisdom of 
the nation into itself ; and the roots of his matured 
opinions were as wide as the country. 

His policy was plastic, too, and legitimately pro- 
gressive as well as independent ; because it represented, 
in successive stages, the popular mind. And where 
any man with a fixed and inflexible personal theory, 
which he must carry out, would inevitably have found 
it too narrow and rigid to encompass the crisis, and 
would have seen it hopelessly shattered in the progress 
of events, his policy was modified and expanded with 
time, because he kept abreast with the people he ruled. 
He carried their purpose and thought in himself. He 
grew with their growth, and shared in their advancing 
wisdom ; and so, to the end, his plans were elastic, and 
the nation gave, to realize those plans — which did but 
> 28 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

incorporate its wisest opinions — its whole tremendous 
and unreserved power. 

But with this element of sympathy with men we 
must combine, in inseparable union, the others I have 
named, to get an adequate impression of his character. 
He had a profound and enduring conviction of the 
value and authority of certain great principles of 
equity and of liberty ; while nothing was more vital or 
positive in him than his faith in the rule and the provi- 
dence of God. From these elements his character 
took firmness, greatness, an individual force and 
majesty. He was kept from becoming a mere sensi- 
tive exponent of the popular feeling, and became in- 
stead a noble Chief Magistrate, instructed by all, yet 
more instructing them in return. 

They who thought him only a shrewd politician 
were singularly mistaken. He was that, no doubt ; 
but history will certainly rank him also among our 
most philosophical statesmen. The great ethical prin- 
ciples which, though invisible, are primitive, organific, 
in our national development, by which our history has 
been vitally moulded, and through which that history 
becomes important to the world — these had to him 
essential reality, and an incomparable value. His love 
for the very system of government of which he became 
the grand defender, had its origin in its relation to 
these principles ; its actual approximate correspondence 
with them ; its capacity to be shaped to express them 
more perfectly ; its fitness and power to extend them. 
"Without rhythm in his sentences, or any taste for 
esthetic art, the ideal in the state moved him more 
than the material, and was always an educating pres- 
ence to his mind. 

29 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

Sprung from the soil, a child of the teeming and 
wealthy "West, it might have been expected that the 
mere physical greatness of the country would have al- 
lured and toned his thought ; that its vast expanse, 
with its prodigal progress in wealth, population and 
all resources, would have been to him, as they had been 
to many others of our statesmen, both from the East 
and from the West, the occasion of his grateful and 
proud admiration. But, on the other hand, he seems 
hardly to have thought of them. He took them for 
granted ; only casually referred to them ; and was 
scarcely sustained or moved in his work by any con- 
siderations derived from them. The effort of the con- 
spirators in league against the government to wrench 
apart what God had bolted together with mountains, 
and had laced inextricably into one by the marvelous 
system of western rivers, — their effort to sever the 
national domain, and to build two empires where cli- 
mate, race, topography, language, combined to demand 
that there should be but one, — this does not seem to 
have roused him against it. So far as appears he never 
was stirred by the natural and not unlaudable ambi- 
tion to have the country remain as of old, surpassing 
others in its physical extent, and outshining them with 
its more splendid treasures. 

But the principles involved in the national institu- 
tions were to him inexpressibly sacred and dear ; and 
against the warfare made upon these, on behalf of an 
ambition which instinctively hated them, he set his 
kindly face like a flint. Even the historic recollections 
of the nation were chiefly important or significant to 
him as connected with these principles ; and the moral 
unity derived from these was that which in his thought 

30 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

knit the present to the past, and made our diverse peo- 
ples one. So he said at the West, in 1858, of the Ger- 
mans, Irishmen, Frenchmen, Scandinavians, who have 
come here since the war of Independence : " If they 
look back through our history to trace their connec- 
tion with those days of blood, they find they have 
none; they cannot carry themselves back into that 
glorious epoch, and make themselves feel that they are 
part of us. But when they look through the Declara- 
tion of Independence, they find that these old men say 
that ' we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all 
men are created equal ; ' and then they feel that that 
moral sentiment, taught in that day, evidences their 
relation to these men ; that it is the father of all moral 
principle in them ; and that they have a right to claim 
it, as though they were blood of the. blood, and flesh 
of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration. 
And so they have. That is the electric cord that links 
the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together ; 
that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love 
of freedom exists in the minds of men." 

So he said afterward, in 1861, substantially at Tren- 
ton, and more fully at Philadelphia : " It was not the 
mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the 
Mother-Land, but it was that sentiment in the Declara- 
tion of Independence, which gave liberty, not alone to 
the people of this country, but I hope to the world, 
for all future time. It was that which promised that 
in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoul- 
ders of all men ; " — adding, with what now looks like 
prescience, " If this country cannot be saved without 
giving up that principle, I was about to say, I would 
rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it." 

31 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

From this conviction of the essential authority and 
value, and the enduring cosmical importance, of the 
principles he maintained, came in part, no doubt, his 
singular freedom from personal assumption, from all 
personal greed for pleasure or gain. He was called, 
by one who knew him well, " the honestest man he 
had ever known ; " and certainly no man's pecuniary 
honesty has been tested more thoroughly — with un- 
counted millions at his command, and a secret service, 
responsible to him, which swallowed gold as thirsty 
sands soak up the rain. But his honesty was not a 
separate trait, set mechanically into his nature and 
governing what was alien to it. It was a part, living 
and inseparable, of his conscientious and ingenuous 
mind. He believed in the Right, for himself and for 
others. Its rules were clear to him, its authority per- 
fect ; and it governed him in small things as well as in 
the greatest. 

From this came also his singular patience, and his 
unwearied courage, in regard to the issue of the terrible 
contest. Sadly as he felt the sacrifice it involved, in- 
clined as he was to distrust himself, and knowing as 
none beside could know with what manifold perils the 
cause was beset, he seems never to have doubted the 
final result. The mind of the public, fixed chiefly on 
the visible forces engaged, wavered often, sometimes 
violently oscillated, between the utmost confidence of 
success and the most extreme depression and fear. He 
held with marvelous steadiness on his way ; never ex- 
asperated, never over-elated, yet always expecting sure 
victory in the end, if it took a lifetime to attain it ; 
because his hold on the principles involved was utterly 
infrangible, and their ultimate victory he believed to 

32 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

be certain. He saw the divine forces which, all un- 
heard by mortal ear, were still contending on our side ; 
and he knew that till Christianity went down, slavery 
could not succeed against liberty. The " rapture of 
battle " he never felt. The " courage of conscience " 
he always knew ; and the key to all his policy is found 
in one sentence of one of his speeches, before he was 
President : " Let us have faith that Right makes Might ; 
and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty 
as we understand it." 

The same element in his character, the same un- 
swerving confidence in principles, gave a true moral 
unity to his administration. It imparted a certain 
philosophical tone, almost a religious, to much of his 
statesmanship; a tone most emphatic in his latest 
address. A latent enthusiasm was bred in him by it ; 
an enthusiasm that rarely was wrought into utterance, 
but that kept all his powers in most complete exercise, 
while it sometimes made his sentences throb with its 
inward fervor. He became, in some sense, to his own 
consciousness, a consecrated man ; consecrated to the 
championship of principles of government, " by which," 
as he said, " the Republic lives and keeps alive," and in 
which the whole human race has a stake. Hence came 
the undertone that thrilled through his short address at 
Gettysburg, which is more henceforth to the American 
people than the stateliest oration preserved in its ar- 
chives. Hence came, in part, the tranquillity and the 
scope of his high-leveled policy. It was to himself an 
inspiration ; while it gave him a power over the en- 
lightened reason of the people which no other presi- 
dent since Washington has had. 

"With this came also, in intimate agreement, that 

C 33 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

sense of the presence and providence of God, which 
seems never to have wavered, from the time when he 
went forth from Springfield for Washington, asking 
the friends whom he left to pray for him, till the time 
when he said, in his latest address, " As was said three 
thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ' the judg- 
ments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" 
Without the least taint of fanaticism, his belief in God's 
regard for the principles which he was defending was 
so earnest and constant, and at last so devout, that the 
whole long war became to. him a sacred war. He rec- 
ognized the guidance of Providence throughout it, in 
our reverses as well as our successes, and saw the fore- 
cast that had shaped it. Reverently, practically, he 
felt himself but an instrument in God's hand ; and 
knew that when the divine consummation had been 
attained, the mystic and awful tragedy would be 
over. " Let us be quite sober," he said ; " let us 
diligently apply the means, never doubting that a 
just God, in his own good time, will give us the right- 
ful result." 

Hence came the crown of dignity on the character 
in which sympathy with men, and conscientious fidelity 
to principles, had been before so intimately blended. 
No man can be morally great whose soul does not rest 
on God as its center, and does not draw from com- 
munion with him its inmost life. Especially when the 
leader in great affairs stands face to face with the 
possible speedy wreck of his country, — when he treads 
a path all hidden and perilous, without precedent to 
govern, or parallel to direct him, and sees the con- 
tracting horizon around shot through with blood and 
all aflame, — the only thing to keep him staunch, 

34 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

serene, clear-visioned, is trust in the Highest. It was 
the life within his life to him whom we mourn. Not 
uttering itself in any set phrase, not prompting much 
to religious ceremonial, it gave him a steadiness almost 
invincible. It made him expectant of a future as grand 
as the way that led to it was bloody and dark. It 
united his soul with all that was highest in the heart 
and conscience of the people which he ruled. 

It was this alone which enabled him to say, in clos- 
ing his second inaugural address, in words that illus- 
trate the whole character of the man, and that will 
live while the language in which they were uttered 
endures : " With malice toward none, with charity for 
all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see 
the right, let us strive on, to finish the work we are 
in ; to bind up the nation's wounds ; to care for him 
who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow 
and his orphans ; to do all which we may to achieve 
and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, 
and with all nations." 

Combine now, with all these loftier elements, a nat- 
ural mirthfulness that was constant, exuberant, that 
sparkled into jest and story, arid kept his faculties al- 
ways fresh ; — remember that these so various traits 
were melted together into a character utterly simple, 
utterly personal, in which was nothing copied from 
antique models, and nothing imported from foreign ex- 
amples, which was wholly an American product, born 
of the influences that had moulded his youth, and 
nourished by the woods, the river and the prairie, as 
modern as the West, and as native as its oaks ; — re- 
member that through the whole atmosphere of the 
times this character daily radiated influence, in some 

35 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

quaint word or comic story, so that all saw the iden- 
tity of it, and felt that, as was said of him once, " if 
he were passed through all hoppers in the universe, 
and ground into dust a million times, when put to- 
gether again at the end he would come out simply 
Abraham Lincoln." And then remember that what 
the country needed and craved, a thousand times more 
than splendid talents, was such thorough and perma- 
nent goodness in its head, honesty, fidelity, patience, 
magnanimity and an unsuspicioned integrity of pur- 
pose, and you have in part the explanation of that 
prodigious hold which he gained on the country 
which he ruled, and on the world which watched that 
country. 

The magnetism that held the nation steadfastly to 
him had here its vital source and seat. He made mis- 
takes ; men did not defend, did not feel it very neces- 
sary to apologize for them. He was not omniscient, 
and his judgment might sometimes be in error. But 
his character was what the people wanted ; too lenient, 
sometimes, but kindly, tolerant, patient, always ; with- 
out a trace of arrogance or of passion ; as little imperi- 
ous as the air or the sunshine ; as little likely to be 
crazed with ambition as the clouds, from which drop 
the showers of spring, to distil their kindly dews into 
venom. And a character like this was incomparably 
more to the imperiled and anxious people than the ut- 
most ability without it would have been. 

There is such a thing as moral genius — a temper so 
wholly individual and original, so vitally compact of 
various excellences, and so alive with personal force, 
that it sustains and attracts more than do splendid in- 
tellectual powers. And it was this moral genius 

36 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

which America wanted, which he supplied. By virtue 
of it, he seemed to fill the land with his example. He 
incarnated not only, but instructed and inspired, the 
temper of the people, till it had more confidence in 
him than it had in itself. Amid arbitrary arrests and 
damaging defeats, its trust in his temper never yielded. 
"His very mistakes," as one has said, " become omnip- 
otent." For, through the whole of his strange term 
of office — after the nation had come to know him — it 
was a source to it of central joy that one so faithful, 
sympathetic, conscientious, was supreme in the gov- 
ernment; that a will so earnestly trustful in Provi- 
dence was guiding the forces which Providence had 
evolved ; that hands so pure had been found to bear, 
across the stony wilderness of fear, and through the 
mounting seas of blood, the civil Constitution, which 
is to the Eepublic its consecrated ark. 

But character alone, even one so original and so 
eminent as his, could never explain the singular place 
attained by Mr. Lincoln in the respect of the country 
and the world ; could never wholly account for the 
work which he accomplished. Intellectual power, ex- 
ecutive faculty, a large capacity for skilful and labori- 
ous administration, are also implied in such master- 
ship as his ; and aside from these, amid such times as 
ours have been, he must have proved a simple drift-log 
on the current, unable to govern it, only rushing with 
it toward the abyss. As we turn, then, to consider 
his nature in this view, we shall find, I think, that 
a remarkable faculty for exact and discriminating 
thought was combined in him with immense common 
sense and great practical sagacity ; while his execu- 
tive force was imparted by a will yielding in small 

37 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

things, but tenacious in great, and capable of long-con- 
tinued exertion. 

These were the instruments through which his 
patient spirit wrought to its great issues. They made 
the force, not splendid, but practical and effective, 
which took from his character " the consecration and 
the gleam," and of which that which we have derived 
from him is the permanent fruit. 

The exact and incisive habit of his mind was con- 
stantly shown in his papers and speeches, and even in 
his unstudied utterances. His jests were always more 
remarkable than for anything else for their absolute 
fitness to the point illustrated. The fun that was in 
them, even when it was coarse, was weighted with 
meaning, and edged with sharp thought. They were 
what Lord Bacon says proverbs are — " the edge-tools 
of speech, which cut and penetrate the knots of af- 
fairs." His discriminations were always accurate ; and 
no sophistry could stand before the fire of his analysis. 

Where has the essential unwisdom of secession, even 
supposing it wholly successful, ever been more suc- 
cinctly exposed than it was by him in his first inau- 
gural : " Physically speaking, we cannot separate. "We 
cannot remove our respective sections from each other, 
nor build an impassable wall between them. . . . 
Is it possible then to make our intercourse more advan- 
tageous, or more satisfactory, after separation than 
before ? Can aliens make treaties, easier than friends 
can make laws ? Can treaties be more faithfully en- 
forced between aliens, than laws can among friends ? " 

"Where has the argument against the constitutional 
right of secession been more tersely, yet more com- 
pletely set forth, than in these words : " Perpetuity is 

38 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

jmplied if not expressed in the fundamental law of all 
national governments. . . . Continue to execute 
all the express provisions of our national Constitution, 
and the Union will endure forever ; it being impossible 
to destroy it, except by some action not provided for 
in the instrument itself." And where has ever the ab- 
surdity of the argument for the right of secession, 
derived from the general doctrine of State Rights, 
been more sharply exhibited than in a sentence or two 
of his first message : " If all the States save one 
should assert their right to drive that one out of the 
Union, it is presumed the whole class of seceder poli- 
ticians would at once deny the power, and denounce 
the act as the grossest outrage upon State Rights. 
But suppose that precisely the same act, instead of 
being called driving the one out, should be called the 
seceding of the others from it, — it would be exactly 
what the seceders claim to do ; unless, indeed, they 
make the point," he adds with an irony not less cut- 
ting because it is gentle, " unless they make the point, 
that the one, because it is a minority, may rightfully 
do what the others, because they are a majority, may 
not rightfully do." 

In his entire treatment of the right of secession, the 
same sharp and destructive analysis is shown. Thus : 
" A part of the present national debt was contracted 
to pay the old debt of Texas. Is it just that she shall 
leave, and pay no part of this herself ? If one State 
may secede, so may another ; and when all shall have 
seceded, none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite 
just to creditors ? " How his lips must have smiled 
as he wrote the question ! " Did we notify them of 
this sage view of ours when we borrowed their 

39 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

money ? " Again : " The Constitution provides, and 
all the States have accepted the provision, that the 
United States shall guarantee to every State in this 
Union a republican form of government. But if a 
State may lawfully go out of the Union, having done 
so it may also discard the republican form of govern- 
ment. So that to prevent its going out, is an indis- 
pensable means to the end of maintaining the guaran- 
tee mentioned ; and where an end is lawful and obli- 
gatory, the indispensable means to it are also lawful 
and obligatory." 

As further illustrative of the same property and 
tendency of his mind, remember a sentence or two 
from his letter to those in Kentucky who though loyal 
to the government objected to the Emancipation Proc- 
lamation, and wished it recalled : " It shows a gain of 
a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and 
laborers [for the Union cause]. Now let any Union 
man who complains of the measure test himself, by 
writing down in one line, that ' he is for subduing the 
Rebellion by force of arms ; ' and, in the next, that ' he 
is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men 
from the Union side, and placing them where they 
would be but for the measure which he condemns.' If 
he cannot face his cause so stated, it is because he can- 
not face the truth." 

So, in a letter written much earlier, to those at the 
West who objected to his policy : " You say that you 
will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem to 
be willing to fight for you, but no matter. Fight you 
then exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proc- 
lamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. 
Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to 

40 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it 
will be an apt time for you to declare that you will 
not fight to free negroes. I thought that in your 
struggle for the Union to whatever extent the negroes 
should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weak- 
ened that enemy in his resistance to> you. Do you 
think differently ? I thought that whatever negroes 
can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less 
for white soldiers to do in saving the Union. Does it 
appear otherwise to you ? But negroes, like other 
people, act upon motives. Why should they do any- 
thing for us, if we will do nothing for them ? If they 
stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the 
strongest motive, even the promise of freedom. And 
the promise, being made, must be kept." 

It is evident that before a mind so careful, so per- 
spicuous, so analytic as this, there was but little 
chance for sophisms to stand ; and that whatever se- 
cured the assent of one so accustomed to logical proc- 
esses, and to clear discriminations, was likely at least 
to have much in its favor, if not to be finally accepted 
and ratified by the public judgment. But the faculty 
of careful ratiocination is not synonymous with prac- 
tical sagacity ; and a mind addicted to the logical 
exercise may be even fatally narrowed thereby — los- 
ing in general perceptive sensibility, in administrative 
skill, and in breadth of reason, while it gains in par- 
ticular dialectical force. In attempting to explain, 
then, the unrivaled personal position attained by Mr. 
Lincoln, the singular power exercised by him, not only 
over public affairs, but over the sentiments and con- 
victions of the people, and over the general mind of 
mankind, it is of cardinal consequence to observe, that 

41 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

with this careful precision of thought he combined a 
really supreme common sense ; a practical sagacity, so 
intuitive and enlightening that, though it did not keep 
him from committing mistakes, it kept him from any 
fatal error, and justified always that confidence in his 
plans which at first it inspired. 

His mind possessed scope, as well as sharpness. He 
looked on the right hand and on the left, before he 
smote. His reason saw before and after ; and in the 
clear comprehension of results, and of the methods by 
which to attain them, his judgment showed itself as 
discursive and prescient as his power of analysis was 
trenchant and fine. Here Was really the center of his 
strength ; the fruitful source of his success as a states- 
man. And when associated, as it was, with the char- 
acter we have sketched, and with a tenacious and pa- 
tient will, it goes very far toward explaining his 
power and interpreting his work. 

There is a showy but dangerous kind of mind some- 
times employed in the offices of statesmanship, whose 
power lies, and also its peril, in what may be called 
intellectual constructiveness. It deals largely with 
the abstract. It is mighty in making paper govern- 
ments. Its schemes express ideal conceptions ; and it 
counts it almost a degradation to stoop to consider 
practical necessities. It theorizes splendidly on what 
ought to be, and insists that the facts shall correspond 
with the theory ; or, if either must give way, that the 
facts shall be displaced to make room for the theory. 
The vast, intricate, gradual administration of public 
affairs, which contemplates many interests, and has to 
deal with great masses of men, it would mould relent- 
lessly by preconceived metaphysical plans ; and it is 

42 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

always unsatisfied until the two distinctly corre- 
spond. 

There is much that is striking in this style of mind. 
It is apt to win a large share of admiration, especially 
among the studious and refined. It is an important ele- 
ment, no doubt, in public counsels : because, when ar- 
rayed, as it usually is, in a speculative opposition to the 
actual governing forces in a nation, its criticisms are 
helpful. They tend to expand the horizon of rulers, and 
to lift toward the austere levels of reason what might 
otherwise sink to the plane of expediency and political 
tactics. If its shining air-palaces do not become solid 
terrestrial successes, they yet hold before men the ideal 
forms of public development ; and the workers beneath 
may build better and higher for having surveyed them. 

But when such a mind is placed itself at the head of 
affairs,— unless it has that reach of vision, with that 
vividness of perception, which belong only to the 
highest genius, and unless possessed of a knowledge 
of facts that is well-nigh omniscient, — it is sure to be 
found incompetent to its task. Especially in difficult 
and critical times, — when great elemental forces are 
evolved beneath and overhead, when the whirlwinds 
of passion are loosed from their chambers, and sudden 
currents, which no chart shows, are hurled to and fro 
with fierce velocity, while the nation drifts and drives 
before them in unexpected directions, — such a mind as 
this is the poorest of pilots. Its beautiful schemes no 
more match the emergency than ingenious theorems 
arrest the typhoon. It wants tact, invention, insight, 
hardihood. Losing sight of the headlands, it fails to 
make allowance for variations of the compass. It 
does not hear the boom of the surf on the rocks to 

43 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

leeward. The awful volume and onset of the storm 
are too much for its theoretic navigation ; and the 
crew must mutiny, and put a more practical man at 
the head, or crew and ship will go to the bottom. 

Not such, certainly, was the mind of Mr. Lincoln. 
Men quarreled with him sometimes, because he had 
not more of this wholly intellectual and ethical tend- 
ency. But if he had had more, the nation and the 
world might not to-day have been his mourners. 

There is, on the other hand, a cheap and sterile 
species of shrewdness, which often calls itself common 
sense, — which sometimes even passes for such, when 
it is installed in positions of influence, — which makes 
nothing of principles, but everything of what it con- 
ceives to be "facts." It has no ideal; but takes its 
suggestions from the newspapers, from the caucuses, 
from the last man who speaks. Its plans are moulded 
by no ethical harmonies, by no fitness even to serve 
great ends, but by immediate personal influences. It 
prides itself on being exclusively practical ; on aiming 
to conserve what already exists, to hold parties to- 
gether, to smooth away differences, and to reconcile 
by a dexterous manipulation antagonistic interests. It 
discredits the higher nature of the people, and thinks 
anything can be carried by a skilful and timely han- 
dling of conventions. It has faith in one thing — polit- 
ical management. It knows one rule — to do what is 
popular. It is constant to one purpose — to keep things 
quiet. It sometimes achieves in peaceful days a tran- 
sient success, and wins, perhaps, from the more un- 
thinking, a superficial applause. But its end, even 
then, is generally failure ; since it never awakens a 
generous impulse, and never inspires any general con- 

44 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

fidence. And in times of imminent public peril, it is 
not insufficient only, but essentially dangerous. Trivial 
by nature, when the pressure comes upon it, it first 
becomes trickish, and then becomes treacherous. 
Losing head altogether, in the final crisis, it is likely 
to carry everything that depends on it into sudden 
and uttermost wreck. 

Such has been the style of mind too often exhibited 
among those who have ranked as political leaders, on 
one side or the other, in our country and time. Such 
was, perhaps, the style of mind men feared would ap- 
pear in President Lincoln, before they had had ex- 
perience of him. But such, thank God ! was as far as 
possible from being the type or the parallel of the 
mind which by degrees was brought out in him. 

Not addicted to theorizing and dogmatic specula- 
tion, in no sense a doctrinaire, he was not either a man 
of expedients ; a simply shrewd, unfruitful manager of 
political affairs. Clear-sighted by nature, he had kept 
his judgment healthy and strong by intercourse with 
men and by a pure and manly life; and so he was 
ready without being rash, wary and cool without the 
slightest timidity. Quick to perceive, he was slow to 
decide, offering liberal hospitality to all discreet coun- 
sels, and determined to discover what was best on the 
whole, whether it agreed with any theory or not. And 
when immense exigencies suddenly confronted him, he 
kept his balance ; he was not bewildered in the crisis ; 
and if he did not show that marvelous genius which 
illuminates all things with one broad flash, he showed 
an intuitive and large common sense ; a calm, persist- 
ent, wide-sighted sagacity ; that quality of mind which 
enables its possessor to see principles clearly, but to see 

45 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

also the governing practical necessities amid which 
those principles must be unfolded ; which makes him 
wise in selecting his methods, and sure, if not swift, in 
accomplishing his ends. He showed, in other words, 
not indeed in an absolute degree but in a very high 
and remarkable degree, precisely that species of men- 
tal ability which an intelligent democracy craves in its 
ruler ; precisely that which was needed for the times ; 
precisely that without which a showy faculty for theo- 
rizing, or a mere trained political shrewdness, would 
infallibly have brought us to speedy destruction. 
Through this he did his unequaled work for the land 
and the world. And this will always shine paramount 
in him, while his history is read. 

Observe what illustration it found in his action ; how 
continual, and how manifold. 

When he came into power the nation was as a com- 
pany lost in the woods : with sudden gulfs sinking 
before it ; with stealthy robbers lurking near ; with 
utter darkness overhead ; the sun gone down, the light 
of all the constellations quenched. No man knew cer- 
tainly what to do, which way to turn, on whom to 
rely. There was danger in advancing, perhaps greater 
in delay ; danger that everything precious might be 
lost ; danger, even, that the travelers themselves, in 
their dark fear and furious haste, might turn on each 
other with deadly blows. You remember what an in- 
finite jargon of counsels, from all presses, forums, in- 
dividual speakers, rent and vexed the gloomy air ; with 
what passionate eagerness the public sought on every 
side for some avenue of escape — urging the adoption 
of one course to-day, and of another, its opposite, to- 
morrow. All voices sounded strange in the darkness ; 

46 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

all paths were obliterated; all bearings lost. There 
was a prodigious power in the nation ; but it was fever- 
ish, headstrong, chaotic. There was a terrific onset to 
be met. The past showed no instances by which to 
instruct ; the future no outlet, toward which to invite. 
It seemed impossible that any one man should be able 
to hold and lead the country ; especially that one with- 
out wide fame, without large experience, without the 
prestige of previous leadership, should be able to guide 
it into safety. 

Measure then the results to which we have come, 
against the conditions in which we stood, and say if 
anything short of a sagacity that seems providential 
could have brought us out of darkness into day ; along 
precipice and pitfall, and through the valleys of strife 
and woe, to the sunlighted summits on which we rest. 
There is nothing accidental in this result. ~No happy 
chances secured it for us. The unusual wisdom of him 
who led us is demonstrated by it — a wisdom more re- 
markable, because more rare, than any specific mental 
faculty ; more lofty than eloquence, more illustrious 
than song. 

And when we examine the path which he trod, how- 
ever at the time we criticized his steps, our impression 
of this great property in him becomes more vivid. 
You can hardly touch a point in his policy where it 
does not appear. 

The tentative nature of his early administration, — his 
delays to act, by which men were irritated, and at 
which they sneered, as showing his want of a positive 
purpose, — yet proved in the end to have been indispen- 
sable to make the action, when it was taken, univer- 
sally acceptable. In the particular form of his meas- 

47 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

ures, as much as in the measures themselves, in the 
very times at which they were initiated, this sagacity 
is discovered. His radicalism showed it ; for it was 
always conservative and rational, not startling the 
timid, His conservatism showed it ; for it was always 
intelligent, not blind, liberal and persuasive, and never 
imperious. 

Reviewing at a glance the whole series of his policy 
in these swift- whirling and perilous years, we may say 
that in these five points especially, his sagacity was re- 
vealed. First : in his early perception of the fact that 
compromise was impossible, and that, with the exist- 
ing views and temper of the rebel leaders and the dis- 
loyal people, the issues at stake between them and the 
government had got to be settled by the stern and 
fearful arbitrament of battle. Second : in his imme- 
diate determination that the war should commence 
through some unjustified act of aggression on the part 
of the revolt, and not through any offensive display of 
purpose and power on the part of the government. 
Third : in his tenacious adherence, from first to last, 
to the one great end to be secured by the war — the 
maintenance of the government in all its prerogatives, 
the maintenance of the republic in its territorial and 
legal integrity ; and in his strict subordination to this 
of all that he did, of all his refusals to take any action. 
Fourth : in the constant flexibility of his methods, his 
readiness to try one thing or another, to see which in- 
strument would be most effective for accomplishing 
the work in which there was neither rule to guide nor 
example to instruct him ; and in his constant recogni- 
tion of the fact that the march of events was govern- 
ing him, while he in turn was influencing it, and that 

48 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

his highest wisdom was to discern what Providence 
meant to accomplish, and to move in the line of its 
battalions. And, finally : in the absolute fixedness of 
purpose with which he avoided foreign complications, 
and, postponing everything else, held the nation to its 
one work of subduing rebellion, and making the gov- 
ernment everywhere supreme. 

Take all these related facts into view — observe how 
early they began to appear, and how consistent, stead- 
fast, deliberate, was that administration of public af- 
fairs which they represent ; how largely this was orig- 
inal with himself, how freely at any rate he accepted 
it, and how persistently he carried it out, — and surely 
his immense sagacity can need no other demonstration. 
It was his policy. The symmetry of it shows the 
singleness of the brain by which it was moulded. He 
surrounded himself with eminent counselors. It was 
one fruit of his wisdom that he did so. And they no 
doubt often influenced him, while in turn instructed 
or corrected by him. But he was always the head of 
the cabinet ; so that it sometimes was matter of com- 
plaint that he did not yield, as others would have 
done, to the different preferences or the adverse deci- 
sions of those combined in it. The truth is, his policy 
had to be his own. He took light gladly, but he could 
not take law, from other minds. And while his coun- 
selors must always have a share, and that a large one, 
in the credit and renown which belong to his policy, 
his name must be always first and supremely identified 
with it. He adopted it because he saw it the best ; 
and, whatever opposition or whatever applause it af- 
terward encountered, when his mind was made up 
it never seems to have subsequently wavered. He 
d ;49 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

knew his plan, what the issue proved it, the wisest 
thing. 

His sagacity was shown, almost as much as in his 
policy itself, in the modes and means, in the very forms 
of statement and illustration, by which he presented 
it to the public. He could be eloquent, if he would. 
Remember the close of his Ohio letter : " Peace does 
not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come 
soon, and come to stay ; and so come as to be worth 
the keeping. It will then have been proved that 
among freemen there can be no successful appeal from 
the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such 
appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. 
And then there will be some black men who can re- 
member that with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, 
and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have 
helped mankind on to this great consummation ; while 
I fear that there will be some white men unable to 
forget that with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, 
they have striven to hinder it." 

But generally the most marked feature of his style 
was its utter simplicity. 

The usual plethoric platitudes of state-papers were 
curiously contrasted by his simple and sinewy sen- 
tences. If an editor wrote to him, he wrote back to 
the editor, and published his answer. And when the 
people had got over their astonishment at his audacity, 
they believed all the more in his utter sincerity. No 
man ever lived who spoke more directly to the heart 
of the people. Critics might quarrel with his rhetoric 
sometimes ; but critics themselves could not gainsay 
the fact that his homely and pithy words had a power 
beyond all ornate paragraphs. With what absolute 

50 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

completeness and precision was the origin of the war 
explained by him, and the course of the people con- 
cerning it justified, in this one sentence : " Both parties 
deprecated war. But one of them would make war, 
rather than let the nation survive ; and the other 
would accept war, rather than let it perish ; — and the 
war came ! " 

His very colloquialisms were mighty for his service. 
" We must keep still pegging away," he said, in the 
gloomiest period of the war ; and every plain man saw 
his duty and was nerved to perform it. " One war at 
a time : " — all the orators could not answer it ; a unan- 
imous press could not have overborne the impression 
it made. " The United States Government must not 
undertake to run the churches : " — the dictum is worth 
a half-dozen duodecimos on the complex relations of 
Church and State. " You need' n't cross a bridge until 
you have got to it : " — if men's minds were not relieved 
of their fears concerning the effect of a general emanci- 
pation, they were at least widely persuaded to post- 
pone these, by the pithy advice. " The central idea of 
secession," he said in one of his messages, " is the es- 
sence of anarchy : " and elaborate pages could not have 
said more than that one apothegm. It is a head-line 
for copy-books, for all time to come. 

Always, the sagacity which had selected his policy, 
and which usually chose with great final correctness 
the men and the times for putting it in practice, was 
shown as well in the homely phrase, or proverb, or 
anecdote, which made it familiar throughout the land. 
More than his opponents knew at the time, more than 
the people themselves were aware, he argued the ques- 
tions of his administration, he carried the public judg- 

51 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

ment to his conclusions, by those quaint words which 
all remembered, and which were repeated with laugh- 
ing satisfaction at thousands of firesides. His max- 
ims were more effective than his messages ; and a score 
of presses could not have rivaled the service of some of 
his stories. 

"With intuitive skill he selected his policy. With a 
skill almost equal he made the people aware what it 
was. And when it had been adopted by him he car- 
ried it out, as I said before, with a power of will per- 
haps as remarkable as was the sagacity which had 
planned it. 

He had not certainly what is called " an iron will." 
Well for him that he had not ! It might have involved 
the destruction of his influence, and the sacrifice of the 
interests he was set to conserve. For iron breaks when 
it is bent ; and no man lives, or ever lived, who could 
have kept his will unbent, amid such times as we have 
passed. Accumulated defeats, disheartening opposi- 
tions, complaints without reason, intolerable delays, — 
the resolution that boasts itself inflexible might have 
been fractured beneath the burden, and the very pil- 
lars of the government have been unsettled. But 
President Lincoln had what was better ; a will like 
strands of tempered steel ; flexible in small things, elas- 
tic, pliant, and always sheathed in a playful gentleness, 
but not liable to be snapped, however it was bent, and 
springing back from every pressure in its primitive 
toughness. Men called him undecided, vacillating, 
uncertain ; and so he was in minor matters — in great 
things, even, till the argument was closed and his mind 
was made up. But when it was, the same men called 
him obstinate, headstrong ; for nothing could change 

52 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

him. He dismissed more than once his most promi- 
nent generals ; and all the pressure of persons or par- 
ties could no more change his purpose afterward than 
it could shake the base of the Alleghanies. He re- 
tained his cabinet, against the threat of serious divi- 
sions in the party which had chosen him. He would 
not go to war with England, in the case of the Trent, 
he would not get involved in a controversy with 
France, on the question of the French occupation of 
Mexico, though friends insisted on his taking high 
ground, and enemies sneered without stay or stint 
because he did not. He launched the bolt of his 
Proclamation against the slavery which had nourished 
rebellion, though a thousand voices prophesied dis- 
aster. 

Deliberate, till at times he almost seemed dilatory — 
unwilling to commit himself till all sides of a question 
had been thoroughly canvassed, and ready, to the very 
verge of a fault, to hear to the last the humblest repre- 
sentative of any interest or any opinion — he was yet 
as staunch as the ribs of the Ironsides when his course 
was decided ; and it was like pulling against gravita- 
tion to try thenceforth to detain or deflect him. The 
tenacity of his will was like that of his muscle, which 
could hold out an axe at arm's length without a quiver 
when others drooped. Its influence reminded one of 
the suck of the under-drif t on a sea beach : which does 
not appear upon the surface, and makes no visible 
wrestle with the waves, but which carries everything" 
into its current, and compels the strongest and skil- 
fulest swimmer to yield himself vanquished. 

Let one other fact, then, be brought to view, and 
the secret of his power is perhaps all before us. It is 

53 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

that his powers were so simple, native, and unostenta- 
tious, that they hardly impressed men while he was 
living as so great as they were ; they excited no jeal- 
ousies ; they started no fears ; and the popular trust 
in them was unapprehensive. At the same time they 
were so original, constitutional, so independent even 
of training, much more of adventitious aids, that they 
always were ready for instant use, and only grew 
more adequate to their work, as its pressure upon them 
became more tremendous. So, again, he had a power 
which more brilliant men, or more literary men, would 
certainly have wanted ; and all his force became most 
effective. 

If genius had taken the place of his sagacity, men 
might have been afraid of him, as they are of the light- 
ning. It is splendid, but fitful ; and its bolts may drop 
where they were not expected. But his force was so 
quiet, patient, pervasive, that it wrought like the vital 
force in nature, which is not exhibited in any flash, but 
which streams unheard through the breasts of the 
earth, and comes to its expression with certainty though 
with silence, in bud and fruit and an infinite verdure. 
If it had been the result of education and political 
practice, or of special accomplishments, there would 
have been something precarious in it. It would have 
depended somewhat on circumstances. It would have 
been liable to be shaken, if not shattered, when new 
and great emergencies were met. But being so native 
and intrinsic as it was, so wholly the result of his 
special constitution, it not only gave no sign of yielding, 
it became ever more thorough and masterly, as it was 
summoned by grander cares to new exhibition. His 
nature grew only larger, and more capable, as time Went 

54 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

on. His faculties were not wearied by the work they 
were put to, and remained to the end unworn and fresh. 

This essential naturalness, this silentness and con- 
stancy, marking his powers, were not favorable perhaps 
to his instant hold on the public admiration. Men 
were not surprised by him into bursts of applause. 
They nowhere saw one mighty figure, cloud-enveloped, 
iris-crowned, riding with splendid supremacy on the 
storm, or heard a voice as of Jove himself commanding 
peace ; and for the time they felt disappointed. But 
his power was more universal in its reach because it 
was quiet ; and now that it is gone we honor it the 
more because it was essential, not artificial, serene and 
patient, not impulsive and scenic. 

As the sunshine draws less admiration than the pic- 
ture, but is recognized still as a far grander good ; as 
the river is not so much praised as the fountain, but 
with its inexhaustible current is a millionfold more 
mighty and precious ; as the stars do not interest our 
fancy so much as the glittering fireworks which cor- 
ruscate beneath, while yet they hold the earth itself 
on its calm poise, — so other statesmen have won more 
applause than was given to him. In times of paroxys- 
mal excitement they have seemed to show a more 
supreme and sudden power. But now that he is gone, 
we miss the sagacity which lighted up intricate paths 
like the sunshine. We miss the deep and constant 
currents of thought and will which bore great burdens 
without a ripple. We feel how grandly secure we 
were while the star, now hidden in higher splendors, 
held up with its unfailing influence the very structure 
and frame of the government. 

Ladies and Gentlemen : — Such was the man for 

55 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

whom we mourn ; and such the position in which 
Providence had placed him. Think then a moment of 
the work which he wrought in it, and all our reasons 
for gladness and for grief, on this day set apart to 
commemorate him, will be before us. 

"With the character I have sketched, to give him at 
once impulse and law, with such effective powers for 
its instruments, with so many trained and skilful 
minds eager to help him, and amid the unparalleled 
opportunities which by his times were opened to him, 
it might have been expected that his work should be a 
great one. It could not even be matter of surprise 
that it should have a colossal character — like the reach 
of the river, along which he had guided his flatboat 
in his youth ; like the stretch of the prairies, on which 
he had builded his home as a man. And yet how far, 
in its actual development, it transcended even such 
expectations ! How singular it is among the recorded 
achievements of man ! How plainly is revealed in it a 
higher than any human will, laying out and arranging 
the mighty scheme ! 

When he took in hand the reins of the government, 
the finances of the country seemed hopelessly de- 
ranged ; and after many years of peace it was difficult 
to raise money, at unprecedented interest, for its daily 
use. And when he died — after such expenditures as 
no man had dreamed of, through four long years of 
devastating war — the credit of the Kepublic was so 
firmly established that foreign markets were clam- 
orous for its bonds, and the very worst thing which 
could have happened, his own destruction, did not de- 
press by one hair's breadth the absolute confidence of 
our own people in them. "When he came to Washing- 

56 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ton, the navy at the command of the government was 
scattered, almost beyond recall, to the ends of the 
earth, and was even ludicrously insufficient for instant 
needs. He left it framed of iron instead of oak, with 
wholly new principles expressed in its structure, and 
large enough to bind the continent in blockade, while 
it made the national flag familiar on every sea which 
commerce crosses. He found an army remotely 
dispersed, almost hopelessly disorganized, by the 
treachery of its officers ; with hardly enough of it left 
at hand to furnish a body-guard for his march to the 
Capital. He left a half-million of men in arms, after 
the losses of fifty campaigns, — with valor, discipline, 
arms, and generalship unsurpassed in the world, and 
admonitory to it. He found our diplomacy a byword 
and a hissing in most of the principal foreign courts. 
He made it intelligent, influential, respected, wherever 
a civilized language is spoken. 

In his moral and political achievements at home, he 
was still more successful. He found the arts of indus- 
try prostrated, almost paralyzed, indeed, by the arrest 
of commerce, the repudiation of debts, the universal 
distrust. He left them so trained, quickened and 
developed that henceforth they are secure amid the 
world's competition. He came to Washington, through 
a people morally rent and disorganized — of whom it 
was known that a part at least were in full accord 
with the disloyal plans ; and concerning whom it was 
predicted by some, and feared by many, that the 
slightest pressure from the government upon them 
would resolve them at once into fighting factions. He 
laid heavy taxes on them, he drafted them into armies, 
he made no effort to excite their admiration, he seemed 

57 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

to throw down even the ancient muniments of their 
personal liberty ; and he went back to his grave 
through the very same people so knit into one, by their 
love for each other and their reverence for him, that 
the cracking of the continent hardly could part them. 

At his entrance on his office he found the leaders 
of the largest, fiercest and most confident rebellion 
known to history, apparently in all things superior to 
himself — in capacity, in culture, in political experi- 
ence, in control over men, in general weight with the 
country itself. And when he was assassinated, he left 
them so utterly overthrown and discomfited that they 
fled over sea, or hid themselves in women's clothes. A 
power it had taken thirty years to mature, a power 
that put everything into the contest — money, men, 
harbors, homes, churches, cities, states themselves — ■ 
and that fought with a fury never surpassed, he hot 
only crushed but extinguished in four years. A court 
that had been the chief bulwark of slavery he so re- 
organized as to make it a citadel of liberty and light 
for all time to come. He found a race immeshed in a 
bondage which had lasted already two hundred years, 
and had been only compacted and confirmed by inven- 
tion and commerce, by arts, legislations, by social 
usage, by ethnic theories, and even by what was called 
religion ; he pretended to no special fondness for the 
race ; he refused to make war on its behalf ; but he 
took it up cheerfully in the sweep of his plans, and left 
it a race of free workers and soldiers. 

He came to the Capital of an empire severed by 
what seemed to the world eternal lines ; with sectional 
interests, with antithetic ideas, with irremovable 
hatreds, forbidding reconstruction. He left it the 

58 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Capital of an empire so restored that the thought of 
its division is henceforth an absurdity ; with its unity 
more complete than that of Great Britain ; with its 
ancient flag, and its unchallenged rule, supreme again 
from the Lakes to the Gulf. Nay : he found a nation 
that had lost in a measure its primitive faith in the 
grand ideas of its own constitution ; and he left that 
nation so instructed and renewed, so aware of the 
supremacy of principles over forces, so committed to 
the justice and the liberty which its founders had 
.valued, that the era of his power has been the era of 
its new birth ; that its history Avill be nobler and more 
luminous forever for his inspirations. 

Not public achievements are his only memorial. 
His influence has come, like the " clear shining after 
rain," on the lesser interests, on the private career, on 
the personal character of the people whom he ruled. 
He educated a nation, with the Berserkers' blood in it, 
into a gentleness more strange than its skill, and more 
glorious than its valor ; a gentleness which even the 
sight of starved men could not sting into ferocity. 
Through his personal spirit he restrained and exalted 
the temper of a continent ; and our letters are to be 
nobler, our art more spiritual, our philanthropy more 
generous, our very churches more earnest and free, be- 
cause of what we have learned from him. The public 
estimation of honesty is brighter. The sense of the 
power and grandeur of character is more intimate in 
men's minds. We know henceforth what style of man- 
hood America needs, and in her progress tends to pro- 
duce. We have a new courage concerning the future. 
We have a fresh and deeper sense of that eternal 
Providence which he recognized. 

59 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

"Not to our country has his work been confined. 
Across the sea extends his influence. It vibrates this 
hour around the world ; and despotic institutions are 
less secure, the progress of liberty throughout Europe, 
throughout Christendom, is more rapid and sure, by 
reason of that which he has wrought. The peoples are 
more hopeful, and the bayonets are more thought- 
ful. The millennium of nations is nearer than it was. 
The race itself is lifted forward toward the gates of 
mingled gold and pearl that wait to swing, on silent 
hinges, into the age of freedom and of peace. 

All this is his work. Of course he has had immense 
forces to work with ; great counselors to suggest, 
great captains and admirals to accomplish ; a million 
brains to be his helpers ; a people full of thought and 
zeal to inspire his plans and push them on. Of course 
God's power, in which he trusted, has gone before and 
wrought beside him ; and he himself, aided by it, has 
" builded better than he knew." But still the work 
continues his : since he has accomplished it, while an- 
other man, with different powers and a different temper, 
in the same position, could not have performed it. 
Without signal genius, or learning, or accomplish- 
ments, but with patience, kindness, a faithful will, a 
masterly sagacity, — planted in times filled full of peril, 
yet opulent also in immense opportunities, working 
with instruments so manifold and mighty as have been 
hardly before entrusted to man, and never before so 
nobly used, — it has been his to do this work : to make 
his country one and grand ; to make the principles, in 
which it has its highest glory, supreme forever; to 
make the world more hopeful, and more free ! 

In this, then, is the final vindication of his fame ; 

60 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the grandest memorial of his character and power 
which it has yet been given to any man to build on 
earth. He did it so naturally that hardly at any 
point does it give us the impression of extraordinary 
exertion. He did it so silently that the world was 
startled with extremest surprise when it found it ac- 
complished. He did it so thoroughly that even his 
death could not interrupt it, could onlyjxmiplete and 
crown the whole. He might well leave a work so 
grand when the capstone had been placed upon it. 
The flag just lifted anew on Fort Sumter, — symbolic 
as it was of the war concluded, of the nation restored, 
— might well be the signal for his departure. More 
than almost any other man, he could say with the 
Lord, looking back on his ministry, " It is finished ! " 

Eeviewing this work, so vast, so enduring and so 
sublime, and looking up unto that which is now for 
him its consummation, all eulogy is inadequate, if it be 
not in vain. The monuments we may build — and 
which it is our instinct and our privilege to build, in 
all our cities as well as at the Capital, in this city by 
the sea, as well as in that where his dust sleeps — are 
not needful to him, but only to the hearts from which 
they arise, and the future generations which they 
shall instruct. From the topmost achievement yet 
realized by man, he has stepped to the skies. He 
leads, henceforth, the hosts whom he marshaled, and 
who at his word went forth to battle, on plains in- 
visible to our short sight. He stands side by side once 
more with the orator, so cultured and renowned, with 
whom he stood on the heights of Gettysburg ; but 
now on hills where rise no graves, and over which 
march, in shining ranks, with trumpet-swells and palms 

61 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

of triumph, immortal hosts. He is with the fathers 
and founders of the Eepublic ; whose cherished plans 
he carried out, whose faith and hope had in his work 
their great fruition. He is with all builders of 
Christian States, who, working with prescient skill 
and will, and with true consecration, have laid the 
foundations of human progress, and made mankind 
their constant debtor. 

The heavens are his home, but the earth and its 
records will take care of his fame. For of all whom 
he meets and dwells with there, no one has held a 
higher trust ; no one has been more loyal to it ; no 
one has left a work behind more grand and vast. 
And so long as the government which he reestablished 
shall continue to endure ; so long as the country which 
he made again the home of one nation shall hold that 
nation within its compass, and shall continue to attract 
to its bosom the liberty -loving from every land ; so 
long as the people which he emancipated shall make 
the palmetto and the orange-tree quiver with the 
hymns of its jubilee ; so long as the race which he has 
set forward shall continue to advance, through bright- 
ening paths, to the future that waits for its swift 
steps — a fame as familiar as any among men, a char- 
acter as distinguished, and an influence as wide, will 
be the fame, the character and the influence, of him 
who came four years ago an unknown man from his 
home in the West, but who has now written' in letters 
of light, on pages as grand and as splendid as any in 
the history of the world, the illustrious name of 
Abraham Lincoln. 



62 



II 

THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT AND 
THE GENESIS OF IT 



An Address delivered before the New York Historical Society at the 
celebration of its seventieth anniversary, April 15, 1875. 



II 

THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT AND THE 
GENESIS OF IT 



Me. Peesident : Membees of the Histoeical 

Society : Ladies, and Gentlemen : — 

The anniversary by which we are assembled marks 
the completion of the seventieth - year of the useful 
life of this Society. It is an occasion of interest to all 
of us, if regarded only in this relation. There are 
some present who remember still the founders of the 
Society : Egbert Benson, its first President, John 
Pintard, Brockholst Livingston, Dr. John M. Mason, 
Drs. Samuel L. Mitchill and David Hosack, Rufus. 
King, Samuel Bayard, Daniel D. Tompkins, DeWitt 
Clinton, and others whose names are less familiar. 
There are many present to whom are recalled memo- 
rable faces, by the names of those who in subsequent 
years received its honors, or shared its labors, who are 
not now among the living : John Jay, Albert Gallatin, 
John Duer, Dr. McVickar, Gulian Yerplanck, Charles 
King, Dr. John W. Francis, William L. Stone, Edward 
Robinson, Luther Bradish, Romeyn Brodhead, Dr. 
De Witt. 

All of us, who are of a studious habit, have enjoyed 
the labors and the influence of the Society, and have 
been encouraged and quickened by it, as well as more 
directly aided, in the small excursions which we have 
made into the domain of historical knowledge. 

It is a source, therefore, I am sure, of unfeigned sat- 

E 65 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

isfaction to all of us to be able this evening to con- 
gratulate the honored President of the Society, its of- 
ficers and its members, on the success which it has ac- 
complished, and on the promise of increasing prosper- 
ity with which its future here salutes us. In its in- 
corporeal and continuing life, it has the dignity of age, 
without its decays. Its seventy years have brought 
larger fame, ampler resources, wider responsibilities ; 
but it has still the privilege of youth — the fair and far 
outlook of existence in its prime. It projects our 
thoughts, from this eminent anniversary, over the 
periods which it anticipates, as well as over that which 
it reviews ; and we shall joyfully unite in the hope 
that its coming career may be only more full of glad- 
ness and growth than has been its past, and that its 
influence may constantly extend, as the years augment 
its possessions and its fame. 

Such institutions are beneficent powers in civiliza- 
tion. Whatever transports us from the present to the 
past, from the near to the remote, widens the mind as 
well as instructs it ; makes it capacious and reflective ; 
sets it free, in a relative independence of local impulse 
and of transient agitation ; gives it, in a measure, a 
character cosmopolitan, and a culture universal. What- 
ever recalls to us eminent persons — their brilliant and 
engaging parts, above all, their fortitude, wisdom, self- 
sacrifice — reenforces our manhood, encourages our 
virtue, and makes us ashamed of our indolent self-in- 
dulgence, of our impatient and fitful habit. 

A community like ours — restless, changeful, abound- 
ing in wealth, vehemently self-confident — especially 
needs such inspiring impressions from a more austere 
and temperate past. A Society which presents that, 

66 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

through libraries and lectures, is ethical, educational, 
and not merely ornamental. In larger proportions, 
with more copious ministry, it fulfils the office of the 
statue of Erasmus, standing always, with a book in its 
hand, in the market-place of Rotterdam, amid the in- 
tricate network of canals, and in the incessant roar of 
traffic. It materializes again the shadowy forms. It 
breathes upon communities, languid or luxurious, an 
ennobling force, from vanished actions and silent lips. 
Presenting, as to immediate vision, the patient and 
achieving years into whose conquests we have entered, 
' it makes us aware of the duty which always matches 
our privilege, and of the judgment which coming time 
will strictly pronounce upon our era. It ministers to 
whatever most aspires in man, to whatever is wor- 
thiest in civilization. And so it concerns the public wel- 
fare that this Society should long fulfil its important 
office, while the city expands to wider splendor, and 
the years fly on with accelerating haste ; that this an- 
niversary should be one in a series, stretching forward 
beyond our life, beyond the life of those who succeed 
us, while the country continues the inviting and afflu- 
ent home of men. 

But this anniversary is not the only one to which 
our thoughts are to-night directed. By the irresistible 
progress of time, we are set face to face with others 
which are at once to occur, the succession of which, 
during several years, is to make large claim upon our 
attention ; and these are anniversaries, in comparison 
with whose significance, and whose secular importance, 
the one which assembles us would lose its dignity if it 
were not itself associated with them. 

History can but picture events ; setting forth, in a 

67 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

measure, their causes and consequences, and indicating 
the varieties of action and of character which were in- 
volved in them. It is, as has been said, " the biog- 
raphy of communities." These societies which pro- 
mote historical studies have it for their function to 
collect the materials, cultivate the tastes, assist the 
minute and complex investigations, out of which 
comes the ultimate enlightening historical narrative. 
Their office is therefore subordinate and auxiliary, 
though quickening and fine. The office of the his- 
torians whom they instruct, is commemorative only, 
not creative. They are the heralds who marshal the 
procession, not the princely figures who walk in it. 
They exhibit actions which they did not perform, and 
describe events in producing which they had no part. 
"When, then, the events themselves are before us, the 
mere narrative of which the student writes and the 
library assists, our chief attention is challenged by 
them. Contemplating them, we lose sight, compara- 
tively, of the instruments which had made their out- 
line familiar, forgetting the processes before the vitality 
and the mass of the facts to which these had brought 
us. It is with us as with the traveler, who ceases to 
remember the ship which carried him across the seas 
when he treads the streets of the distant town, watches 
its unfamiliar manners, hears the dissonance of its 
strange speech, and looks with a surprised delight on 
its religious or civil architecture. So we, in front of 
the great events, the signal actions, the mean or the 
illustrious characters, to which the historical narrative 
has borne us, forget for the time the narrative itself, 
or only remember the intellectual grace which moulded 
its lines, the strength of proof which confirmed its 

68 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

conclusions, the buoyant movement with which it bore 
us across intervening floods of time. 

We stand, as a people, in the presence of a com- 
manding Past, and shall continue so to do in succeed- 
ing years of our national experience. One centennial 
anniversary, dear to the thoughts of every lover of 
English eloquence and American liberty, has passed 
already ; and you will pardon me, perhaps, if I pause 
upon that, because it has suggested the theme on which 
I would offer some remarks. 

It was just one hundred years ago, on the twenty- 
second of March last, that Edmund Burke delivered in 
the British Parliament that speech on " Conciliation 
with the Colonies," which, of itself, would have assured 
the fame of any speaker. The profoundest political 
and legislative wisdom was presented in it with per- 
spicuous clearness, and enforced with an eloquence 
which Burke himself never surpassed. In eager and 
majestic utterance, he recited the circumstances which 
had led him to seek, with impassioned ardor, to pro- 
mote the reconciliation of the colonies to the govern- 
ment of Great Britain ; and to do this by repealing the 
acts of Parliament against which resistance had here 
been aroused, and by adjusting future legislation on 
the plan of getting an American revenue, as England 
had got its American empire, by securing to the colo- 
nies the ancient and inestimable English privileges. 

The speech is, of course, familiar to you ; yet a rapid 
indication of its compact and coercive argument may 
serve, perhaps, to revive it in your thoughts, as a 
couplet sometimes recalls a poem, as the touch of even 
an unskilful crayon may set before us the wide out- 
reach of a landscape. 

69 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

The circumstance to which he first referred, was the 
rapid, increase of the colonial population ; an increase 
so swift, and so continuing, that, in his own words, 
" state the numbers as high as we will, whilst the dis- 
pute continues, the exaggeration ends. . . . Your 
children do not grow faster from infancy to manhood, 
than they [of the colonies] spread from families to 
communities, and from villages to nations." 

The second circumstance which impressed his mind, 
was the commerce of the colonies : " out of all propor- 
tion, beyond the numbers of the people ; " in respect 
to which " fiction lags after truth ; invention is unfruit- 
ful, and imagination cold and barren." Of their ex- 
panding agriculture, he said : " For some time past the 
Old "World has been fed from the JSTew. The scarcity 
which you have felt would have been a desolating 
famine, if this child of your old age, with a true filial 
piety, with a Roman charity, had not put the full 
breast of its youthful exuberance to the mouth of its 
exhausted parent." Of the fisheries of the colonies, 
especially of the whale fishery, he spoke in words 
whose fame is coextensive with the English tongue, 
as carried to an extent beyond that reached by " the 
perseverance of Holland, the activity of France, or the 
dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise ; " 
and this by a people " who are still, as it were, but in 
the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of 
manhood." 

Still more important, however, before his view than 
either the increasing population of the colonies, their 
agriculture, or their commerce, was the temper and 
character of the people who composed them ; in which 
a love of freedom appeared to him the predominating 

70 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

feature, distinguishing the whole. The people of the 
colonies were descendants of Englishmen. They were, 
therefore, " not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty 
according to English ideas ; " and so they were funda- 
mentally opposed, with all the force of immemorial 
tradition, to that taxation without representation, 
against which the English lovers of freedom had al- 
ways fought. Their popular form of government, 
through provincial assemblies, contributed to foster 
this attachment to liberty. Their religion gave to this 
civil influence complete effect. " The people," he said, 
" are Protestants ; and of that kind which is the most 
adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. 
. . . Their religion is a refinement on the principle 
of resistance ; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the 
Protestantism of the Protestant religion." 

If this were not strictly true in the southern colo- 
nies, where the Church of England had wider estab- 
lishment, yet the spirit of liberty was there only higher 
and haughtier than in others, because they had a mul- 
titude of slaves ; and " where this is the case," he 
affirmed, " in any part of the world, those who are free, 
are by far the most proud and jealous of their free- 
dom. . . . The haughtiness of domination com- 
bines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and ren- 
ders it invincible." 

The education of the colonies, particularly the ex- 
tent to which the study of the law was cultivated among 
them, contributed to their untractable spirit. It led 
them, not, "like more simple people, to judge of an ill 
principle in government only by an actual grievance," 
but to " anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure 
of the grievance by the badness of the principle." 

71 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

The last cause of the disobedient spirit in the colo- 
nies, to which he called the attention of Parliament, 
was " laid deep in the natural constitution of things " — 
in the remoteness of their situation ; the three thou- 
sand miles of ocean forever intervening between Eng- 
land and them. 

From all these sources, the ever- widening spirit of 
liberty had grown up in the colonies, now unalterable 
by any contrivance. " We cannot," he said, " we can- 
not, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people, 
and persuade them that they are not sprung from a 
nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates. 
. . . I think it is nearly as little in our power to 
change their republican religion as their free descent ; 
. . . and the education of the Americans is also on 
the same unalterable bottom with their religion ; " 
while, if all these moral difficulties could be got over, 
" the ocean remains. You cannot pump this dry. And 
as long as it continues in its present bed, so long all 
the causes which weaken authority by distance will 
continue." 

His inference from all was, that no way was open 
to the government of Great Britain, but to " comply 
with the American spirit as necessary ; or, if you 
please, to submit to it, as a necessary evil." " My hold 
of the colonies," he said, " is in the close affection 
which grows from common names, from kindred 
blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. 
These are ties, which, though light as air, are strong 
as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the 
idea of their civil rights associated with your govern- 
ment ; — they will cling and grapple to you ; and no 
force under heaven will be of power to tear them from 

72 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

their allegiance. . . . The more they multiply, the 
more friends you will have ; the more ardently they 
love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. 
. . . It is the spirit of the English constitution, 
which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, 
feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the 
empire, even down to the minutest member." 

If I were in the least ambitious, ladies and gentle- 
men, to attract your attention to any imagined skill 
of my own in presenting a subject, I should not have 
ventured thus to recall to you the magnificent scope, 
the pervading power, the instinctive and harmonious 
splendor, of that memorable oration with which, a 
hundred years ago last month, the oaken rafters of St. 
Stephen's rang. The perfect apprehension of remote 
facts, as when the distant seas or summits are seen by 
an eye which needs no glass, through a wholly trans- 
parent air ; the vast comprehension, which took into 
immediate vision all facts and principles related to the 
subject, tracing at a glance their inter-relations, as one 
traces the lines of city streets from a " coigne of van- 
tage " above the roofs, and sees the rivers on either 
hand which kiss the piers ; the opulence of knowledge ; 
the precision and force of argumentation ; the fervor 
of feeling, the energy of purpose, which modulated the 
rhetoric to its consenting grace and majesty ; the lucid 
and large philosophy of history ; the imperial imagina- 
tion, vitalizing all, and touching it with ethereal 
lights : — we look at these, and almost feel that elo- 
quence died when the lips of Burke were finally 
closed. One's impulse is to turn to silence ; and not 
even to offer his few small coins, more paltry than ever 
before the wealth of such regalia. 

73 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

But I have no desire at all, except to stand with 
you a few moments at the point of view at which the 
oration of Burke has placed us, and to seek, with you, 
to revive in our thoughts, with a little more of fulness 
in detail, the origin and the growth of that essential 
and prophesying spirit which he from afar discerned 
in these colonies. For in that lies the secret of our 
subsequent history. It is not certain that Burke him- 
self, looking at the matter through the partial lights 
of English narrative and treating the subject for im- 
mediate practical influence upon Parliament, has fully 
set forth either the sources or the strength of the tem- 
per which he saw. But the complete understanding 
of these is most important to whomsoever would read 
our annals. 

The remark was long ago made by Macchiavelli, 1 
that " States are rarely formed or re-formed save by 
one man." Certainly, however, it was not so with 
ours. The spirit shaped the body, here, according to 
the Platonic plan. The people formed its own com- 
monwealths, its ultimate nation; and "the people," 
says Bancroft, looking back to the peace of 1782, " the 
people was superior to its institutions, possessing the 
vital force which goes before organization, and gives 
to it strength and form." 2 This vital force, therefore, 
in the pre-revolutionary American people, this inher- 

1 " It must be laid down as a general rule, that it very seldom or 
never happens that any government is either well-founded at first, or 
thoroughly reformed afterward, except the plan be laid and conducted 
by one man only, who has the sole power of giving all orders, and 
making all laws, that are necessary for its establishment. ' ' — Political 
Discourses, upon Livy, Book I., chap. ix. 

2 History of the United States, Vol. X., p. 593. 

74 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

ent and energizing life, early developed, largely 
trained, acting at that time, and acting ever since, on 
our organized public development — this is the subject 
which I hope you will accept, as deserving your atten- 
tion, and not unsuited to this occasion. 

At the time when Burke saw the meaning, and in- 
terpreted the menace, of this distinctive American 
spirit, it had all the force which he ascribed to it ; and 
the effect of it was shown, only more speedily, in 
larger and more energetic discovery, than he expected. 
It can scarcely be doubted that if the counsels of his 
wise statesmanship had been listened to by the Parlia- 
ment on whose unheeding ears they fell, and by the 
Court which passionately repulsed them, the separation, 
which was inevitable, between England and the colo- 
nies would for a time have been postponed ; and some 
of us might have been born, on American shores, the 
loyal subjects of King George. But those counsels 
were not heeded ; as those of Chatham, six weeks 
earlier, in the House of Lords, had not been ; and just 
four weeks after they were uttered, before report of 
them could probably have reached this country, on the 
19th of April, at Lexington and at Concord, out of 
the threatening murk of discontent, shot that fierce 
flash of armed collision between the colonists and the 
troops of Great Britain, beyond which reconciliation 
was impossible ; of which the war, and the following 
Independence, were the predestined sequel. 

Not quite a month later, as you remember, on the 
10th of May, Ticonderoga, with Crown Point, was 
taken by the provincials ; and on the very day of the 
capture — as if to justify the name " Carillon," given 
by the French to Ticonderoga, and to make its seizure 

75 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

the striking of a chime of bells l — the Continental Con- 
gress reassembled at Philadelphia, with the proscribed 
John Hancock soon at its head, and entered on the 
exercise of its long authority ; an authority vague and 
undefined, as such an occasional authority must be, 
but made legitimate, and made comprehensive, by the 
voluntary submission of those whom the Congress 
represented. Washington was appointed Commander- 
in-Chief. As indicative of the tendencies of public 
opinion, before the end of May, the citizens of Meck- 
lenburg County, in North Carolina, by public action 
disowned allegiance to the British Crown, and adopted 
their declaration of Independence ; and on the 17th 
of June, at Breed's Hill, the ability of the provincials 
to throw up redoubts under the cannon-fire of a fleet, 
and to make grass fences, with men behind them, a 
sufficient barrier to repeated charges of British veterans, 
was fully proved ; and the great drama of our seven 
years' war was finally opened. 

During the years immediately before us, these 
events, with those which succeeded, will be fully re- 
cited ; and eloquence and poetry, the picture and the 
bronze, will again make familiar what the bulk and 
the prominence of intervening events had partly 
hidden from our view. The evacuation of Boston by 
the British ; the bloody fight on the heights behind 
Brooklyn, so nearly fatal to the American cause ; the 
crossing of the Delaware ; the night attack on the 
Hessians at Trenton ; Princeton, and Germantown, 

1 "To Ticonderoga, the Indian 'Meeting of Waters,' thfey [the 
French] gave a name apparently singular, ' Carillon, ' a Chime of 
Bells."— Egbert Benson's Mem.; Coll. of the N. Y. Hist. Soc, 2d 
Series: Vol. 2, page 96. 

76 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

with the frightful winter at Valley Forge ; the battles 
of Monmouth, Saratoga, Camden, King's Mountain, 
and Eutaw Springs ; the final surrender of Cornwallis, 
at Yorktown — all will in their turn be described, as 
their centennial anniversaries occur. The past will 
come back to us. We shall hear again the pathetic 
an$ heroic story which touched the commonplace life 
of our childhood with romance and with awe. 

And with this will be repeated the narrative — not 
less impressive — of the civil wonders which accom- 
panied the long military struggle ; of the separate 
constitutions adopted by the colonies ; of the great 
Declaration, which raised those colonies into a na- 
tion ; of the marvelous state papers, which seemed to 
Europe prepared in the woods, yet on which the 
highest encomiums were pronounced, by eminent 
Englishmen, in Parliament itself ; of the Articles of 
Confederation, which prepared the way for an organic 
Union ; of the French alliance, which brought sol- 
diers of a monarchy to fight for a republic, and sent 
back with them a republican spirit too strong for the 
monarchy ; of the money, so worthless that a bushel 
of it would hardly buy a pair of shoes ; of the military 
stores, so utterly inadequate that barrels of sand had 
to represent powder, to encourage the troops ; of the 
final adoption, after the war, of that now venerable 
Constitution of government, which recent changes 
have expanded and modified, but under which the 
nation has lived from that day to this. All these will 
hereafter be recited. 

It cannot but be regarded as a fortunate circum- 
stance — fortunate for himself, and for those to whose 
means of historical study he has made such large and 

77 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

brilliant contributions — that the concluding volume 
of his history has just been published by Mr. Bancroft, 
whose relations to this Society have been so intimate ; 
and that down to the peace of 1782 he has completed 
his elaborate and shining narrative. The enthusiasm 
of youth has survived in him, to animate and enhance 
the acquisitions of age ; and those who read, in their 
own youth, his earlier volumes, and admired alike 
their strength and polish, will rejoice that his hand 
has placed the capital upon the tall and fluted shaft. 
" Worthy deeds," said Milton, " are not often destitute 
of worthy relators ; as by a certain fate, great acts and 
great eloquence have most commonly gone hand in hand, 
equalling and honoring each other in the same ages." l 
It is, of course, not my purpose to ask your atten- 
tion to any of the particulars of that remarkable and 
fascinating history whose jutting outlines I have 
traced. ISText week, at Lexington and at Concord, 
eloquent voices will open the story. Others will fol- 
low, in swift succession, till every field, and each 
principal fact, has found celebration. My office is 
merely preparatory to theirs. The subject before me 
is not picturesque. It hardly admits of any entertain- 
ing or graphic treatment. But it nevertheless is of 
primary importance ; and all who follow will have to 
assume what I would exhibit. There was a certain 
energizing spirit, an impersonal but inherent and 
ubiquitous temper, in the people of the colonies, which 
lay behind their wide and sudden Revolutionary move- 
ment ; which pushed that movement to unforeseen ends, 
and which built a republic where the only result 
sought at the outset was relief from a tax. Burke dis- 

1 Hist. Brit., Book II. 
78 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

cerned this before it had been exhibited in the field, 
or had done more than give its own tone to debates 
and state papers. From that time on, to the end of 
the war, it was constantly declared — brooding and 
brightening in the obscurest air, giving Congress its 
authority, giving conflict its meaning, inspiring lead- 
ers, restoring always the shattered and the scanty 
ranks. It was this invulnerable, inexpugnable force, 
which no calamities could ever overwhelm, which was 
sure, from the start, of the ultimate victory. 

It is this, and this only, of which the world ever 
thinks in connection with the time, or of which the 
permanent history of the country will take much ac- 
count. The incidents are trivial, except for their re- 
lation to this. It surprises us to remember how small 
were the forces, on either side, in that " valley of de- 
cision " in which questions so vital to us, and to man- 
kind, were submitted to the arbitrament of battle; 
that Burgoyne's army numbered at its surrender less 
than six thousand English and German troops, and had 
never contained more than eight thousand, with an 
uncertain contingent of Canadians and Indians ; that 
at Camden, Gates had but six thousand men, only 
one-fourth of them Continentals, and Cornwallis but 
two thousand; that the force which capitulated at 
Yorktown was but seven thousand; and that the 
whole number of troops sent from England to this 
country, during the entire continuance of the war, was 
less than a hundred and thirteen thousand. 

Compare these numbers with those of the large and 
disciplined armies which Frederick II, twenty years 
earlier, encountered at Rossbach and at Leuthen ; com- 
pare them with those which, thirty years after, 

79 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

swarmed forth from France, under Napoleon, — and 
they are the small dust of the balance. Compare 
them with those of France, on the one hand, or of 
Germany on the other, in their tremendous unfinished 
duel, and the largest battles in which our fathers took 
part seem skirmishes of outposts. Nay, compare them 
with the forces, from the North and the South, which 
fought each other in our late civil war, and the 
Revolutionary musters become nearly imperceptible. 

It was the spirit behind the forces, which wielded 
the instruments, and compelled the events, which gave 
these any importance in history. Impalpable, inde- 
structible, omnipresent in activity, self -perpetuating, 
there was this vital impersonal temper, common to 
many, superior to all, which wrought and fought, 
from first to last, in the. Congress, on the field. In 
some respects it was a unique force, without precise 
parallel among peoples, breaking in unexpectedly 
on the courses of history. A more or less clear rec- 
ognition of the fact has given to that time its rela- 
tive prominence before mankind. A distinct appre- 
hension of the nature of the force so victoriously re- 
vealed, is necessary to show how the Revolution be- 
came as complete and fruitful as it was, and how that 
small American struggle, going on in a country re- 
mote and recent, and succeeded by events incom- 
parably more striking, has taken its place among the 
significant and memorable facts in the history of the 
world. 

What was that force, then ? and whence did it 
come ? If I mistake not, it was ampler in its sources, 
more abundant, more secular, and more various in its 
energy, than we have often been wont to conceive. 

80 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

There was certainly nothing of the ideal heroic 
among the ante-revolutionary people of this country. 
They did not live for sentiment, or on it. They were 
not doctrinaires, though they are sometimes so repre- 
sented ; and nothing could have been further from 
their plans than to make themselves champions of 
what did not concern them, or to go crusading for 
fanciful theories and imaginary prizes. They were, for 
the most part, intelligent, conscientious, God-fearing 
people — at least those were such who gave tone to 
their communities, and the others either accepted the 
impression, or achieved the imitation, of their govern- 
ing spirit. But they were plain, practical people, al- 
most wholly of the middle class, who lived, for the 
most part, by their own labor, who were intent on 
practical advantages, and who rejoiced in conquering 
the wilderness, in making the marsh into a meadow, 
in sucking by their fisheries of the abundance of the 
seas, and in seeing the first houses of logs, with mud 
mortar, and oiled paper for glass in the windows, giv- 
ing place to houses of finished timber, or imported 
brick, with sometimes even mahogany balustrades. 

When the descendants of the settlers at the mouth 
of the Piscataqua replied to a reproof of one of their 
ministers, that the design of their fathers in coming 
thither had not been simply to cultivate religion, but 
also largely to trade and catch fish, they undoubtedly 
represented a spirit which had been common along 
the then recent American coast. 1 The Plymouth 
Colony was exceptional in its character. To a large 
extent, the later and wealthier Massachusetts Colony 
was animated by sovereign religious considerations ; 

1 Adaras' Annals of Portsmouth, page 94. 
F 81 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

and so were those of Khode Island and Connecticut. 
But they are certainly right who affirm that even 
these men, or many of them, showed a tough and per- 
sistent secular enterprise combining with their re- 
ligious zeal. It was indeed an indispensable element 
to the soundness of their character. It kept them 
from wide fanatical excesses. It made them hardy, 
sagacious, indefatigable, inflexible in their hold on the 
fields and the freedoms which they had won. 

As compared with our more recent pioneers, who 
have peopled the territories, subdued the mountains, 
and opened toward Asia the Golden Gate, the relig- 
ious element was certainly more prominent in those 
who earliest came to this country. But even they 
were far from being blind to material advantages, and 
far enough from being willing to live as idle enthusiasts. 
"Give me neither poverty nor riches," was their con- 
stant prayer; with an emphasis upon "poverty." 
They meant to worship God according to their con- 
sciences ; and woe be to him who should forbid ! But 
they meant, also, to get what of comfort and enjoyment 
they could, and of physical possession, from the world 
in which they worshiped ; and they felt themselves 
co-workers with God, when the orchard was planted, 
and the wild vine tamed; when the English fruits had 
been domesticated, under the shadow of savage for- 
ests, and the maize lifted its shining ranks upon the 
fields that had been barren ; when the wheat and rye 
were rooted in the valleys, and the grass was made to 
grow upon the mountains. 

It is eas}^, of course, to heighten the common, to 
magnify the rare and superior virtues, of men to whom 
we owe so much. Time itself assists to this, as it 

82 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

makes the mosses and lichens grow on ancient walls, 
disguising with beauty the rent and ravage. It is 
easy to exaggerate their religious enthusiasm, till all 
the other traits of their character are dimmed by its 
excessive brightness. Our filial pride inclines us to 
this ; for, if we could, we should love to feel, all of us, 
that we are sprung from untitled nobles, from saints 
who needed no canonization, from men of such heroic 
mould, and women of such tender devoutness, that the 
world elsewhere was not worthy of them ; that they 
brought to these coasts a wholly unique celestial life, 
through the scanty cabins which were to it as a 
manger, and the quaint apparel which furnished its 
swaddling-clothes ; that airs Elysian played around 
them, while they took the wilderness, as was said 
of the -Lady Arbella Johnson, " on their way to 
heaven." 

I cannot so read their history. Certainly, I should 
be the last in this assembly to say any word — in what- 
ever haste, in whatever inadvertence — in disparage- 
ment of those who, with a struggle that we never 
have paralleled and can scarcely comprehend, planted 
firmly the European civilization upon these shores. 
I remember the hardness which they endured, and 
shame be to me, if, out of t.he careless luxury of our 
time, I say an unworthy word of those who faced for 
us the forest and the frost, the Indian and the wolf, 
the gaunt famine and the desolating plague. I re- 
member that half the Plymouth colonists died the 
first winter, and that in the spring, when the long- 
waiting Mayflower sailed again homeward, not one of 
the fainting survivors went with her, — and I glory in 
that unflinching fortitude which has given renown to 

83 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

the sandy shore ! Our vigor is flaccid, our grasp un- 
certain, our stiffest muscle is limp and loose, beside 
the unyielding grapple of their tough wills. 

But what I do say is, that the figures of even the 
eminent among them were not so colossal as, they 
sometimes appear, through the transfiguring mists of 
Time; that of culture, as we know it, they for the 
most part had enjoyed very little ; that even in char- 
acter they were consciously far from being perfect. 
They were ■ plain people, hard-working, Bible-reading, 
much in earnest, with a deep sense of God in them, and 
a thorough detestation of the devil and his works ; 
who had come hither to get a fresh and large oppor- 
tunity for work and life ; who were here set in cir- 
cumstances which gave stimulus to their energy, and 
brought out their peculiar and masterful forces. But 
they were not, for the most part, beyond their asso- 
ciates across the seas in force or foresight ; and they 
left behind them many their peers, and some their 
superiors, in the very qualities which most impress us. 
" Not many wise, not many noble, not many mighty," 
— then, as aforetime, that was true of those whom God 
called. The common people, with their pastors and 
guides, had come to the woods, to labor, and pros- 
per, and hear God's word. And upon them He put 
the immense honor of building here a temple and a 
citadel, whose walls we mark, whose towers we count, 
and to which the world has since resorted. 

But it is, also, always to be remembered that the 
early settlers of this country were not of one stock 
merely, but of several ; and that all of them came out 
of communities which had had to face portentous 
problems, and which were at the time profoundly 

84 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

stirred by vast moral and political forces. They were 
themselves impregnated with these forces. They 
bore them imbedded in their consciousness ; entering, 
whether articulately or not, with a dominant force 
into their thought, into their life. They transported 
to these coasts, by the simple act of transferring their 
life hither, a power and a promise from the greatest 
age of European advancement. They could not have 
helped it, if they would. They could more easily have 
left behind the speech which they had learned in child- 
hood, than they could have dropped, on their stormy 
way across the ocean, the self-reliance, the indomitable 
courage, the constructive energy and the great aspira- 
tion, of which the lands they left were full. 

This, it seems to me, is hardly recognized as clearly 
and widely as it should be : that the public life of a 
magnificent age — a life afterward largely, for a time, 
displaced in Europe, by succeeding reactions — was 
brought to this continent, from different lands, under 
different languages, by those who settled it ; that it 
was the powerful and moulding initial force in our 
civilization ; and that here it survived, from that time 
forward, shaping affairs, erecting institutions, and 
making the Nation what it finally came to be. 

They may not themselves have be*en wholly aware 
of what they brought. There was nothing in the out- 
ward circumstance of their action to make it distin- 
guished. They had no golden or silver censers in 
which to transport the undecaying and costly flame. 
They brought it as fire is sometimes carried, by rough 
hands, in hollow reeds. But they brought it, never- 
theless ; and here it dwelt, sheltered and fed, till a 
continent was illumined by it. Let us think of this 

85 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

a little. Let some rapid suggestions call up to us the 
times, the new and unmeasured energies of which 
swept out to this continent, when the colonists came ; 
all the forces of which — political, social, and not 
merely religious — found here their enlarging arena. 

At the time of the seizure of New Netherland by 
the English, in 1664, the main elements of the popu- 
lation afterward composing the thirteen colonies, were 
already on these shores. Subsequent arrivals brought 
increase of numbers, except in 'New England, where 
the English immigration was then at its end. Impor- 
tant colonies, as Pennsylvania and Georgia, date their 
existence from a time more recent. But the principal 
nationalities of northern and northwestern Europe, 
from which our early population was derived, had 
already representatives here ; and what followed con- 
tributed rather to the increase than to the change of 
that population. It was said, you know, that eight- 
een languages were spoken before then in the thriv- 
ing village which Stuyvesant surrendered, and which 
is now this swarming metropolis ; * and we certainly 
know that Englishmen, Dutchmen, Swedes, Germans, 
French Huguenots, Scotch Presbyterians, Quakers, 
and Catholics, were at that time upon the American 
coast. 

From that point, then, it is well to look back, and 
see what was the governing spirit, the diffused and 
moulding moral life, which the steady immigration of 

1 This surprising statement appears to have been first made as early 
as 1643, by the Director-General Kieft, to Father Jogues, the Jesuit 
Priest, escaped from the Iroquois, who was then his guest. It was 
afterward repeated by Father Jogues, in his Description of New Nether- 
land.— Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc, 2d Series, vol. 3 : page 215. 

86 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

sixty years, back to the date of the building of James- 
town, had been bringing hither. For these sixty years, 
in comparison with the hundred and ten which fol- 
lowed, were like the first twenty-five years in one's 
personal life, compared with the fifty which succeed. 
They gave the direction, projected the impulse, pre- 
scribed the law, of the subsequent development ; and 
they, of course, surpass in importance any other equal 
period, in showing how the nation came at last to be 
what it was. But these sixty years, also, were vitally 
connected with the forty or fifty which had gone be- 
fore them ; since in those had been born and morally 
trained the men and women who subsequently came 
hither. Out of those had come the vivifying forces 
which the settlers at Jamestown, and they who came 
later, transferred to this continent. "We shall not have 
reached the tap-roots of our history till we have gone 
back to their beginning. 

Look back, then, from the surrender of New Am- 
sterdam to the date of the coronation of Queen Eliza- 
beth, in 1558 — less than fifty years before Jamestown 
began, little more than fifty years before Adrian Block 
built on this island its first small ship, 1 and named it 
" The Restless," — and you have before you the remark- 
able century, out of which had broken the settlements 

1 This was in 1614; but another ship had been previously constructed 
on the coast. "Mr. Cooper, in his Naval History, speaks of Block's 
yacht as ' the first decked vessel built within the old United States. ' 
But the honor of precedence in American naval architecture must fairly 
be yielded to Popham's unfortunate colony on the Kennebec. The 
'Virginia,' of Sagadahoc, was the first European-built vessel within 
the original thirteen States. The ' Eestless, ' of Manhattan, was the 
pioneer craft of New York." — Brodhead's Hist, of New York. Vol. I, 
page 55. (Note.) 

87 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

on these shores, at the end of which they all had passed 
under British supremacy. That was the birth-time of 
our public life. From its great spirit, from its ener- 
getic and vivid experience, fell a splendor and a power 
on the embryo people which finally became the Amer- 
ican Nation. 

It was a munificent, a heroical century ; in which, 
for the first time, the immense vigor of popular en- 
thusiasm entered decisively into national development, 
and forced acceptance from statesmen and kings; 
which was, accordingly, the boldest in plan, the widest 
in work, the most replete with constructive energy, 
which up to that time had been known in Europe. 
Fruitful schemes, strenuous struggles, extraordinary 
genius, amazing achievement, the decay of authority, 
the swift advance of popular power — these so crowd 
the annals of it that no brief narrative could give a 
summary of them. Long repressed tendencies came 
to sudden culmination. Hidden forces found vast de- 
velopment. The exuberant and outbreaking energies 
of Christendom could no more be restrained within 
ancient limitations, than the lightnings, elaborated in 
hidden chambers of earth and sky, can be locked in 
the clouds from which they leap. 

The invention of the movable type, a hundred years 
earlier, at Harlem or at Maintz, had made books the 
possession of many, where manuscripts had been the ' 
luxury of the few. Knowledge was distributed, and 
thought was interchanged, on this new vehicle, with a 
freedom, to a breadth before unknown. The found- 
ing of libraries, the enlargement of universities, had 
given opportunity for liberal studies ; and the ancient 
world drew nearer to the modern, as the elegant letters 

88 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

of Greece and Rome made the genius and the action 
again familiar with which their times had been illus- 
trious. At the same time, the discovery of this conti- 
nent had expanded the globe to the minds of Euro- 
peans, and had opened new areas, the more exciting 
because undefined to their enterprise and hope. The 
popular imagination, in the early part of that age, was 
stirred by tales of sea-faring adventure as it had never 
been by the wildest fiction. The air was full of ro- 
mance and wonder, as savage forests, dusky figures, 
feathered crests, ornaments of barbaric gold, strange 
habitations, unheard-of populations, were lifted before 
the gaze of Europe, along the new western horizon. 
Almost nothing appeared incredible. Grotius himself, 
scholar, jurist, statesman as he was, cautious by nature, 
and trained in courts, was inclined to believe in an 
arctic race whose heads grew beneath their shoulders. 
El Dorado was to Raleigh as real a locality as the 
duchy of Devon. Even Caliban and Puck seemed 
almost possible persons, in an age so full of astounding 
revelations. 

But neither the magical art of printing, nor the dis- 
covery of the transatlantic continent, had stirred with 
such tumultuous force the mind of Christendom as 
had the sudden Reformation of religion, starting in 
Germany, and swiftly extending through Northern 
Europe. To those who accepted it, this seemed a re- 
vival of Divine revelations. It brought the Most High 
to immediate personal operation upon them. As in 
the old prophetic days, the voice of speech came echo- 
ing forth from the amber brightness which was as the 
appearance of the bow in the cloud. The instant 
privilege, the constant obligation, of every man to 

89 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

come to God, by faith in His Son ; the dignity of that 
personal nature in man for which this Son of God had 
died; the vastness of the promises, whose immortal 
splendors interpreted the cross; the regal right of 
every soul to communion, by the Word, with the Spirit 
by whom that "Word was given : — these broke, like a 
flash from heights celestial, not only on the devout 
and the studious, but over the common life of nations. 

Before the force so swiftly and supremely inspired, 
whatever resisted it had to give way. It not only re- 
leased great multitudes of men into instant independ- 
ence of the ancient dominant spiritual authority; it 
loosened the ligatures, or shattered the strength, of 
temporal tyrannies ; and its impulses went more widely 
than its doctrines. In Italy and Spain, as well as in 
England, in the parts of Germany which retained their 
ancient allegiance to the pontiff, as well as in those 
which had thrown this off, there was an unwonted 
stimulation in the air ; and the forces of learning, of 
logic, or of arms, which fought against the Reforma- 
tion, were themselves more eager and more effective 
because of the impulse which it had given. 

Commerce was extending, as letters and liberties 
were thus advancing. Inventions followed each other 
almost as swiftly, with almost as much of startling 
novelty, as in our own time ; and the ever-increasing 
consciousness of right, of opportunity, and of power, 
the sense of liberation, the expectation of magnificent 
futures — these extended among the peoples, with a 
rapidity, in a measure, before unknown. 

It was an age, therefore, not so much of destruction, 
as of paramount impulse to wide and bold enterprise. 
Yast hopes, vast works, imperial plans, were native to 

90 



THE EARLY AMERICAN 7 SPIRIT 

it. It was an age of detonating strife, but of study, 
too, and liberal thought; of the noblest poetry, the 
most copious learning, a busy industry, a discursive 
philosophy, a sagacious statesmanship ; when astonish- 
ing discovery stimulated afresh magnificent enter- 
prise ; when great actions crowded upon each other ; 
when the world seemed to have suddenly turned 
plastic, and to offer itself for man's rebuilding ; when 
each decade of years, to borrow an energetic expres- 
sion of Brougham, " staggered, under a load of events 
which had formerly made centuries to bend." 

So far as the South of Europe is concerned, it is 
represented to us chiefly, certainly most pleasantly, by 
the great names, in literature or in fine art, by which 
it is distinguished ; Tasso, crowned at Rome, and 
Galileo, condemned ; l Cervantes, Calderon, Lope de 
Yega, in Spain ; Tintoretto, with his audacity of 
genius and the lightning of his pencil ; Cagliari, bet- 
ter known as Paul Veronese, Guido Eeni, the Caracci ; 
Yelasquez, Murillo, and Salvator Rosa. It saw the 
close of Titian's life, and of Michael Angelo's. It saw 
the completion of the dome of St. Peter's. 

In Northern Europe great clusters of names also 

1 The traveler to Kome, visiting the church of S. Maria sopea 
Mineeva, will hardly fail to feel the propriety of its name, if it is 
recalled to him that in one of the halls of the monastery attached to 
it, then occnpied by the Inquisition, Galileo met his sentence, and 
pronounced his retraction: "I abjure, curse, and detest, the error 
and the heresy of the motion of the earth, ' ' etc. It startles one to 
remember that this was at as late a date as June 22, 1633 ; five years 
before Harvard College was founded. The Inquisition itself has since 
seen the truth of the more celebrated words which the aged philoso- 
pher is said to have uttered, in an undertone, when rising from his 
knees. 

91 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

shine on the century, of men preeminent in science, 
letters, or the fine arts ; Kepler, Tycho Brahe ; Moliere, 
Racine, Rochefoucauld, Pascal; Rubens, Rembrandt, 
Yan Dyke, Claude Lorraine. Edmund Spenser, the 
" Prince of Poets," as his monument describes him, 
filled his career in it ; Richard Hooker, Philip Sidney, 
Walter Raleigh, Francis Bacon, John Selden, Isaac 
Casaubon. It bears upon its brow, as it moves in 
the great procession of historic periods, the dazzling 
diadem of the name of Shakespeare. It saw the 
youth of Leibnitz, and of JSTewton. It heard the 
music of Milton's verse. It saw the entire life 
of Descartes, the middle manhood of Spinoza. It 
watched Grotius from his birth to his burial, in the 
city of Delft. 

The telescope came to light in it, and brought to 
men's view vast whirls of suns, as if recreating for 
them the heavens. The microscope was so perfected 
as to carry the sight, almost without exaggeration, 
from the infinitely great to the infinitely little, and to 
show the marvels of organization in creatures so 
minute that a speck of dust is a mountain beside them. 
The thermometer, the barometer, the air-pump, the 
nature and use of electricity, the circulation of the 
blood — these are among its great discoveries. The 
mariner's compass was improved and illumined till it 
became almost a new instrument. The first English 
newspaper had its origin in this century. Logarithms 
were invented. The Royal Exchange was opened in 
London. The Dutch and English East India Com- 
panies were established. The globe was explored on 
every meridian, by the search of its discovery. It 
gained new luxuries, as well as new arts, and was the 

92 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

first century sweetened in Europe by the manufacture 
of refined sugar, or soothed and stimulated by tobacco 
and coffee. 

Things like these are the surface indications of pro- 
digious forces working beneath ; like the specks or 
wreaths of glittering spume which are flung into the 
air, when immense currents rush into collision. But 
the intensity and the breadth of these forces are better 
represented by the national changes which the century 
witnessed. 

To look only at the states of Northern Europe, it 
saw the magnificent reign of Elizabeth, the great 
English Rebellion, the execution of Charles I, the 
ten years of the Commonwealth, the final return 
of Charles II. It saw the Huguenot struggle in 
France, the stormy youth and the brilliant govern- 
ment of Henry IY, the following reign of Louis 
XIII, the earlier successes of Louis XIY ; the long 
ministry of Sully, on whom Henry leaned with 
such justified confidence ; the triumph of Riche- 
lieu, who broke the power of feudalism on the one 
hand, of political Protestantism on the other, and who 
" made his royal master," as Montesquieu said, " the 
second man in France, but the first in Europe ; hum- 
bling the king, while he exalted the monarchy." It 
saw the ministry, the marriage, and the death, of Car- 
dinal Mazarin. 

The forty years' reign of Philip II filled nearly 
half of it. It witnessed the amazing revolt of the 
Netherlands, their successful resistance of all the Span- 
ish fleets and forces, their final establishment of a 
Protestant republic. It saw the regeneration of Swe- 
den ; and it included, in its extraordinary and com- 

93 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

prehensive annals, the whole course of the Thirty 
Years' War, with the sorrow and sacrifice which that 
involved, the heroic energies which it revealed, till it 
closed in the welcome peace of Westphalia. 

Another century so energized by great emergent 
opinions, so suddenly full of a vehement and conquer- 
ing public life, so prolific in enterprise, so swarming 
with productive force, one must look long to find. 
When we reach it in history we are conscious of step- 
ping out of the Past into the modern life of Christen- 
dom. The patience, skill, inventive daring of our 
civilization were more vitally a part of it than were 
its longest and fiercest conflicts. It fought to get 
more room for work. Elemental rages darkened the 
heavens. The concussion of ethereal forces was con- 
stant. Yet the work of construction went always for- 
ward, and on the broadest national scale. New liber- 
ties were asserted and organized. New states came 
rounding into form. The descendants of the Batavians 
made the scanty lands which they had rescued from 
the wash of the sea, the seat of a history more majestic 
in its elements, both of tragedy and of triumph, than 
the Continent had seen, and the center of a commerce 
which flung its tentacles around the globe. The Eng- 
lish fleets, in which Catholic jind Protestant fought to- 
gether, scattered the Armada, under skies that seemed 
to conspire for their help, and hit, as with ceaseless 
lightning strokes, the ships and coasts and power of 
Spain ; while all the time went widely on, with only 
indeed augmented impulse, the labor of inventors, the 
studies of scholars, the voyages of discoverers, the theo- 
logian's discussion, the painter's pencil, and the states- 
man's plan. 

94 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

So full of immense movement was the century, so 
opulent in achievement, so mighty in impulse, that the 
earth seemed freshly alive beneath it, the skies bur- 
nished with prophetic gleams. The common people, 
for a time at least, had mastered their place in politics 
and society ; and the whole mind of Northern Europe 
was full of an intense stimulation. Education was 
wide. Plain men, like Governor Bradford, never 
trained in any university, were easy masters of five or 
six languages. 1 Farmers' sons, like Francis Drake, 
became great admirals. The enterprise of the time 
was not reckless or vague, but was the expression of 
this abounding, exuberant life, instructed by research, 
and guided by courageous wisdom. There was noth- 
ing factitious in the force of the century, as there is 
nothing deceptive in its fame. Alive in every fiber, 
with an exultant and stimulated life, Northern Europe 
sent forth its freshly-awakened, world-sweeping ac- 
tivities, as streams are shot into sudden motion when 
the Easter sun unlocks the ice. 

This was the century out of the midst of which the 
early settlers of this continent came ; whose eager en- 
ergies came here with them. They were not its. splen- 
did representatives. No fleets of galleons brought 
them over. They came in coarse clothing, not in rai- 



1 "He was a person for study, as well as action ; and hence, not- 
withstanding the difficulties through which he passed in his youth, he 
attained unto a notable skill in languages : the Dutch tongue was be- 
come almost as vernacular to him as the English ; the French tongue 
he could also manage ; the Latin and the Greek he had mastered ; but 
the Hebrew he most of all studied, ' because, ' he said, ' he would see 
with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God in their native beauty.' " 
—Mather's Magnalia. Book 2, Chap, i, § 9. 

95 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

ment of velvet, or gilded armor. They attracted little 
attention at the time. They only seemed to them- 
selves to be doing a work which somehow had fallen 
to their lot, and which must be done ; and that the 
century which they represented would be more illus- 
trious by reason of their action was certainly a thought 
which never occurred to them. But they shared its 
life, if not its renown ; they brought its vigor, if not 
its wealth. Their small stockades, at Jamestown and 
Plymouth, at New Amsterdam and Port Orange, were 
the points on our coast where that energetic and sov- 
ereign century, then passing over Europe, set up its 
banners. 

We never shall understand them, or their work, ex- 
cept this be before us. 

Recall, then, the England which the colonists left 
and represented. Elizabeth herself had been dead four 
years when they landed at Jamestown, and seventeen 
years when they settled at Plymouth ; but the image 
of her imperious face was on most of the coins which 
they brought hither, and the memories of her reign 
had a force more vital than the actual power of her 
successor. The middle-aged could well remember the 
camps, the watch-fires, the universal excitements of 
the year of the Armada. The young might have read, 
upon broad sheets, her " Golden Speech " to her last 
Parliament. l The older might have sailed with Fro- 

1 "There seemed for a moment to be some danger that the long and 
glorious reign of Elizabeth would have a shameful and disastrous end. 
She, however, with admirable judgment and temper, declined the con- 
test, put herself at the head of the reforming party, redressed the 
grievance, thanked the Commons, in touching and dignified language, 
for their tender care of the general weal, brought back to herself the 

96 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

bisher or Drake, or themselves have borne arms under 
the famous admirals and captains, who, at her inspira- 
tion, had fought with a triumphant energy on sea and 
land. 

The very temper which now strove to displace 
that earlier spirit only contributed to make it signal. 
Raleigh was beheaded October 29th, 1618 ; eleven 
years after Jamestown commenced, two years before 
the Mayflower's voyage. That was the last passion- 
ate blow of the vanquished Spain at the age of Eliza- 
beth, whose energy and whose chivalry he represented. 
It showed the unsleeping animosity of the Spaniard ; 
but it also brought into startling exhibition the weak- 
ness and wickedness which were now on the throne 
from which the great daughter of Anne Boleyn had 
lately passed ; and the spatter of his blood smote 
every heart, which was loyal to the Past, with pain 
and rage. Carlyle has suggested that Oliver Crom- 
well was perhaps at that time living in London, a 
student of law, and may have been a spectator of the 
scene. Many others, who were afterward in this 
country, must have seen the gallant and cultured man 
whose youthful grace had attracted Elizabeth, and 
whose life had imaged the splendor of the age ; and a 
sharp sense of the Nemesis in history may well have 
startled them when the son and successor of the royal 
assassin bowed his reluctant and haughty head be- 
neath the axe, in front of "Whitehall. 

The daring and inspiring spirit which had marked 

hearts of the people, and left to her successors a memorable example of 
the way in which it behooves a ruler to deal with public movements 
which he has not the means of resisting." — Macaulay : Hist, of Eng- 
land. Vol. I, page 63. 

G 97 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

the preceding half-century was not destroyed by the 
murder of one of its representatives, or by the 
treachery of another. A year after the landing at 
Plymouth, Thomas Wentworth, afterward known as 
Earl of Strafford, that "great, brave, bad man," whom 
Macaulay has pictured with a pencil so exquisite and 
so unrelenting, declared in Parliament, with vehement 
emphasis, that " the liberties, franchises, privileges, 
and jurisdictions of Parliament, are the ancient and 
undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects 
of England." That was then a passionate conviction 
in the House of Commons. Twenty years later, when 
he who then uttered it had been for twelve years its 
fierce antagonist, it caught him in its grasp, and swept 
him to the scaffold. The pre-revolutionary struggle 
of our fathers had its prophecy in that sentence. Its 
seminal principle involved their whole contest. 

Before the Pilgrims sailed from Holland, he whom 
Elizabeth, forty years before, in the superb promise of 
his youth, had called her " young Lord Keeper," was 
Chancellor of England. His "Novum Organum" 
might have come to our shores with Bradford and 
Carver; his later writings with Winthrop and Hig- 
ginson. His immense influence on human thought 
synchronizes completely with the English settlements 
on our coast. The then new English version of the 
Scriptures was just in time to gild with its lights, of 
Hebrew story and Christian faith, the rude life on 
savage shores. Shakespeare had died, untimely, in 
1616 ; and the first collected edition of his plays was 
published in the year of the settlement of this city. 
How far the impulse and renown of his genius had 
preceded his death we cannot be sure ; but the chil- 

98 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

dren of those who had never read, who certainly had 
not seen his plays at the Blackfriars' or the Globe, 
have been debtors ever since to that supreme and 
visioned mind which reanimated the past, interpreted 
history, and searched the invisible spirit of man as if 
it were transparent crystal. Milton was a lad twelve 
years old when the Plymouth colony began, having 
been born, in 1608, in Bread street, London, under the 
armorial sign of the " Spread Eagle " ; and his public 
life was wholly accomplished within the period now 
under review, though it was not till later that the 
" Paradise Lost " was published in London, and the 
chequered and lofty life of the poet was closed in 
sleep. 

These names make the age which presents them 
majestic. But their chief importance to us, at this 
moment, is derived from the fact that they represent 
a popular life which preceded themselves, and which 
quickened the personal genius that surpassed it. The 
authors were the fountain-shafts, through which shot 
up, in flashing leap, the waters flowing from distant 
heights. With the various beauty, the incomparable 
force of their differing minds, they gave expression to 
impalpable influences of which the age itself was full. 

The same influences wrought in humbler men w~ho 
could not give them such expression. They were the 
vital inheritance of our fathers. The men of the Eng- 
lish middle class, — they were the men from the loins 
of whose peers, and whose possible associates, Kaleigh 
and Shakespeare and Milton had sprung. They 
could not, many of them, read the Latin of the " De 
Augmentis." They might not appreciate the cosmic 
completeness of Shakespeare's mind, or the marvelous 

99 

LofC. 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

beauty of Corrms and L' Allegro. But they incorpo- 
rated, more than others, the essential spirit of that pro- 
lific, prophetic age, which had found its voice in these 
supreme writers. They had breathed from infancy 
that invigorating air which was full of discovery, en- 
terprise, hope, of widened learning, popular enthu- 
siasm, a fresh and vivid Christian faith. They had felt 
the inrush of that vehement life which for sixty years 
had been sweeping over England ; and the irrepress- 
ible temper of the time, which gave birth to the let- 
ters, impulse to the discovery, law to the statesman- 
ship, life to the religion, of the age of Elizabeth, was 
as much a part of them as their bones and their blood. 

They came, in large part, because they represented 
that spirit ; because it seemed to them likely thence- 
forth to be less common and governing in England ; 
and because they would rather encounter the seas, and 
face the perils and pains of the wilderness, than tarry 
in a country where James was king, and George 
Yilliers was minister. When Endicott cut out the 
cross at Salem from the banner of England, he ex- 
pressed a temper as old and as stubborn as the fights 
against Spain. When Wadsworth, fifty years later, 
seized the charter of Connecticut, and hid it in the 
Wyllys' oak, he did precisely what the English tradi- 
tions of a century earlier had enjoined as his duty. 
And when the discerning Catholics of Maryland ac- 
cepted religious freedom in their colony, they only 
expressed anew the spirit in which their fathers had 
fought the Armada, though the pontiff had blessed it, 
in their loyalty to a Queen against whom he had pro- 
claimed a crusade. 

It is never to be forgotten that that wonderful cen- 

100 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

tury, which saw at its beginning the coronation of 
Elizabeth, and at its end the death of Cromwell — the 
age of Grenville, Raleigh, Drake, of Bacon, Shakes- 
peare, and the manhood of Milton — that was the cen- 
tury, in which the arts and arms of England, its reso- 
lute temper, and its sagacious and liberal life, were 
solidly planted upon these shores. 

The powerful element brought from Holland, by 
the Dutch and the Walloons, was only the counter- 
part of this. An eminent American has made it fa- 
miliar, in our time, to all who admire heroism in 
action, and eloquence in story. 

Mr. Motley has said of William the Silent, that " his 
efforts were constant to elevate the middle class ; to 
build up a strong third party, which should unite much 
of the substantial wealth and intelligence of the land, 
drawing constantly from the people, and deriving 
strength from national enthusiasm, — a party which 
should include nearly all the political capacity of the 
country; and his efforts were successful." 1 "As to 
the grandees, they were mostly of those who sought 
to 'swim between two waters,' according to the 
Prince's expression." The boers, or laborers, were 
untrained and coarse, not the material with which to 
erect an enduring commonwealth ; and on this stal- 
wart middle class, trained by churches and common 
schools, skilful in enterprise, patient in industry, fer- 
vent in patriotism, unconquerable in courage, the 
illustrious patriot depended, under God, for the safety 
of his country. 

Among the inhabitants of the province of New 



1 Rise of the Dutch Republic, Vol. Ill, page 219. 
101 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

Netherlancl, when it came into the English possession, 
were many representing this class. The early servants 
of the West India Company had been succeeded by 
farmers and traders. The patroons of the vast and 
indefinite manors had, for the most part, tarried at 
home, and their titles had largely been extinguished. 
The colonists then here — agriculturists, mechanics, sail- 
ors, dealers — represented fairly the commercial, polit- 
ical, social spirit which was prevalent in Holland ; 
and while wolves and Indians filled the forests, which 
then extended from Canal Street to Harlem, the life 
in the two separated settlements was much the same 
as in the equal contemporaneous villages of the Fa- 
therland. Maurice — for whom the Hudson River had 
first been named — was Stadtholder of the Nether- 
lands, when the permanent settlement was made here ; 
and the clouded luster of his great name was still vivid 
with a gleam from the past. Only two years before, 
the contest with Spain had recommenced. During 
the preceding twelve years' armistice, the United 
Netherlands had passed through a disastrous interval 
of religious dissension, ambitious intrigue and popular 
tumult. But that was now ended; and the first 
stroke of the Spanish arms, under Spinola, had revived 
the magnificent tradition of the days when, as their 
historian has said, " the provinces were united in one 
great hatred, and one great hope." The interval of 
peace had not softened the stubbornness of their pur- 
pose to be free. They were ready again "to pass 
through the sea of blood, that they might reach the 
promised land ; " and all that was inspiring in the an- 
nals of two preceding generations came out to instant 
exhibition, as hidden pictures are drawn forth by fire. 

102 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

The earlier years of Maurice himself, when the twig 
was becoming the tree — " tandem fit surculus arbor ; " 
his following victories, when the renowned Spanish 
commanders were smitten by him into utter rout, as 
at Meuport and at Turnhout ; the fatal year of the 
murder of his father, when the " nation lost its guid- 
ing-star, and the little children cried in the streets ; " 
the frightful " Spanish fury " at Antwerp ; the siege 
of Leyden, and the young university which commemo- 
rated the heroism of those who had borne it ; the siege 
of Harlem, and all the rage and agony of its close : — 
these things came up, and multitudes more — the whole 
panorama in which these were incidents — when the 
Spaniards sought, in 1622, to open the passage into the 
North by capturing the town of Bergen-op-Zoom, and 
when Maurice relieved it. The temper which this 
tremendous experience, so intense and prolonged, had 
bred in the Hollanders — the omnipresent, indestructi- 
ble spirit, not wholly revealed in any one person, but 
partly in millions — this was again as vigorous as ever, 
throughout the Kepublic which it had created, when 
the thirty families came to this island, when the two 
hundred persons were resident here, in 1625. 

Some of those then here, more who followed, were 
of the same class, the same occupation and habit of 
life, with those who had fought for sixty years, on sea 
and land, against the frenzied assaults of Spain ; who, 
under Heemskirk, had smitten her fleet into utter de- 
struction, beneath the shadow of Gibraltar ; who had 
fought her ships on every wave, and had blown up 
their own rather than let her flag surmount them ; 
who had more than once opened the dykes, and wel- 
comed the sea, rather than yield to the Spanish pos- 

103 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

session the lands thus drowned ; who had ravaged the 
coasts, and captured the colonies, of the haughty Pen- 
insula ; and who, in the midst of all this whirlwind 
of near and far battle, had been inaugurating new 
forms of government, cultivating religion, advancing 
education, developing the arts, draining the lakes, and 
organizing a commerce that surrounded the world. 

When the four Dutch forts were established — at this 
point, at Harlem, at Fort Orange, on the Delaware, — 
this spirit was simply universal in Holland ; and those 
who came hither could not but bring it, unless they 
had dropped their identity on the way. They came 
for trade. They came to purchase lands by labor ; to 
get what they could from the virgin soil, and send 
peltries and timber back to Holland. But they 
brought the patience, the enterprise and the courage, 
the indomitable spirit and the hatred of tyranny, into 
which they had been born, into which their nation 
had been baptized with blood. 

Education came with them; the free schools, in 
which Holland had led the van of the world, being 
early transplanted to these shores ; a Latin school be- 
ing established here in 1659, to which scholars were 
sent from distant settlements. * An energetic Chris- 

1 "It is very pleasant to reflect that the New England pilgrims, 
during their residence in the glorious country of your ancestry, found 
already established there a system of schools which John of Nassau, 
eldest brother of William the Silent, had recommended in these words: 
' You must urge upon the States General that they should establish free 
schools, where children of quality, as well as of poor families, for a 
very small sum, could be well and Christianly educated and brought 
up. This would be the greatest and most useful work you could ever 
accomplish for God and Christianity, and for the Netherlands them- 
selves. ' . This was the feeling about popular education in the 

104 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

tian faith came with them, with its Bibles, its minis- 
ters, its interpreting books. Four years before, 
Grotius, imprisoned in the castle of Louvestein, had 
written his notes upon the Scriptures, and that treatise 
on the Truth of the Christian Religion, which, within 
the same century, was translated from the original 
Dutch into Latin, English, French, Flemish, German, 
Swedish, Persian, Arabic, the language of Malacca, 
and modern Greek. He had written it, he says, for 
the instruction of sailors ; that they might read it in 
the leisure of the voyage, as he had written it in the 
leisure of confinement, and might carry the impression 
of that Christianity whose divinity it affirmed, around 
the globe. Copies of it may easily have come hither 
in the vessels of the nation which had no forests, but 
which owned more ships than all Europe beside. 

The political life of the Hollanders had come, as 
well as their commercial spirit, and their decisive re- 
ligious faith. They loved the liberty for which they 
and their fathers had tenaciously fought. They saw 
its utilities, and understood its conditions ; and if you 
recall the motto of the Provinces, in their earlier 
struggle — "Concordia, res parvce crescunt; Discordia, 
maxima dilabuntur " — and if you add a pregnant sen- 
tence from their Declaration of Independence, made 
in July, 1581, I think you will have some fair impres- 
sion of the influences which afterward wrought in this 
land, transported hither by those colonists. " When 
the Prince," says that Declaration, "does not fulfil 



Netherlands, during the 16th century." — Mr. Motley's Letter to St. 
Nicholas Society ; quoted in address of Hon. J. W. Beekman, 1869, 
pages 30, 31. 

105 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

his duty as protector, when he oppresses his subjects, 
destroys their ancient liberties, and treats them as 
slaves, he is to be considered not a Prince, but a Tyrant. 
As such, the Estates of the land may lawfully and 
reasonably depose him, and elect another in his place." 1 
They did not elect another to the place ; but, renounc- 
ing their allegiance to Philip, as their children did 
afterward to George III, they founded a republic 
which lasted on those oozy plains two hundred years. 
The very temper which afterward spoke in the pub- 
lic documents issued from Philadelphia, had been ut- 
tered in Holland two centuries earlier; and they who 
came hither from that land of dykes, storks and wind- 
mills, had brought it as part of their endowment. 
No masterpieces came with them, of Rubens or Rem- 
brandt, whose genius flourished in the same century, 
under the skies lurid with battle, and on the soil fat- 
tened with blood. No wealth came with them, like 
that which already was making Amsterdam, " the 
Yenice of the North," one 1 of the richest towns in 
Europe. They built a stone chapel in 1642 ; 2 but they 
could not reproduce on these shores a single one of 
the scores of churches, stately and ancient, which they 
had left, nor any of those superb civic palaces in 



1 Rise of Dutch Republic, Vol. Ill, page 509. 

2 " A contract was made with John and Richard Ogden, of Stam- 
ford, for the mason-work of a stone church, seventy-two feet long, 
fifty wide, and sixteen high, at a cost of twenty -five hundred guilders, 
and a gratuity of one hundred more if the work should be satisfac- 
tory. The walls were soon built ; and the, roof was raised, and covered 
by English carpenters with oak shingles, which, by exposure to the 
weather, soon ' looked like slate.' " — Brodhead's History of New York, 
Vol. I, pages 336-7. 

106 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

which the Netherlands cities were rich. But amid 
whatever straitness of poverty, amid whatever simplic- 
ity of manners, however unconscious of it themselves, 
they brought the immanent moral life which had made 
the morasses at the mouth of the Khine the center of 
a traffic more wide and lucrative, the scene of a history 
more majestic, than Europe before had ever seen, and 
the seat of the first enlightened republic on all the 
circuit of its maritime coast. 

To these two elements, the English and the Dutch, 
was added a vivid and graceful force by those who 
came from the fruitful Protestant provinces of France. 
It is sometimes forgotten that the Huguenots consti- 
tuted the larger and wealthier part of the population 
of New Amsterdam, after the Dutch ; so that La 
Montaigne had been in a measure associated with 
Kieft in the government here, as early as 1638; so 
that public documents, before 1664, were ordered to 
be printed in the French language as well as in the 
Dutch. They brought with them industry, arts, re- 
finement of letters, as well as the faithful and fervent 
spirit which had been infused into them in the ckam- 
bres ardentes of their long persecutions. 

They were, probably, more generally a cultivated 
class than were the colonists from either England or 
Holland. The Huguenot movement had begun in 
France, not among the poorer people, but in the capi- 
tal and in the university. The revival of letters had 
given it primary impulse. It was scholastic, as well 
as devout, and so was fitly signaled and served by the 
most philosophical system of theology elaborated in 
Europe. Its ministers were -among the most learned 
and eloquent in that country and century of eloquent 

107 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

preachers. It had counted distinguished nobles in its 
ranks; Conde and Coligni among its leaders. Mar- 
guerite, Queen of Navarre, had been in her time the 
center of it. It was intimately connected with the 
high politics of the realm. It had control of abundant 
wealth. The commerce of the kingdom, and its finest 
manufactures, were largely in the hands of those who 
composed the eight hundred Huguenot churches found 
in France in the early part of the seventeenth century. 
The families of this descent who were early in New 
York — some of them as early as 1625 — and who were 
afterward in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Yirginia, 
South Carolina, brought with them thus an ancestral 
influence of education, refinement and skilful enter- 
prise, as well as of religious fidelity. The French 
vivacity blended in them with a quick and careful 
sense of duty. They brought new arts and graceful 
industries, a certain chivalric and cultivated tone; 
while the right to freedom, in the worship of God 
and in the conduct of civil affairs, was as dear to 
them as to any of those whose fortunes they shared. 
This spirit had compelled respect in the land which 
they left, from those who hated it most intensely. 
For nearly ninety years it had made it indispensable 
to maintain there the edict which secured to them re- 
ligious rights. When that was repealed, with the 
frightful dragonnades which met such ghastly retribu- 
tion in the streets of Paris, a hundred years after, 
half a million of the citizens of France pushed across 
its guarded frontiers into voluntary exile, while the 
fiery spirit of those who remained blazed forth in the 
war of the Camisards, unextinguished among the Ce- 
verines for twenty years. 

108 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

Such an element of population was powerful here 
beyond its numbers. Its trained vitality made it effi- 
cient. It is a familiar fact that of the seven Presidents 
of the Continental Congress, three were of this Hugue- 
not lineage : Boudinot, Laurens and John Jay. Of 
the four commissioners who signed the provisional 
treaty at Paris, which assured our independence, two 
were of the same number : Laurens and Jay. Faneuil, 
whose hall in Boston has been for more than a hun- 
dred years the rallying-place of patriotic enthusiasm, 
was the son of a Huguenot ; Marion, the swamp-fox 
of Carolina, was another ; Horry, another ; Huger, 
another. It was a Huguenot voice, that of Duche, 
which opened with prayer the Continental Congress. 
It was a Huguenot hand, that of John Laurens, which 
drew the articles of capitulation at Yorktown. Be- 
tween these two terminal acts, the brilliant and faith- 
ful bravery of the soldier had found wider imitation, 
among those of his lineage, than had the cowardly 
weakness of the preacher; and two of those, who 
thirty years after, in 1814, signed the treaty of peace 
at Ghent, were still of this remarkable stock — James 
Bayard and Albert Gallatin. 

Whenever the history of those who came hither 
from La Rochelle, and the banks of the Garonne, is 
fully written, the value and the vigor of the force 
which they imparted to the early American public 
life will need no demonstration. 

The Swedes and Germans, who also were here, 
though in smaller numbers, represented the same 
essential temper, and were in radical harmony of spirit 
with those by whose side they found their place. 
Gustavus Yasa had given to Sweden comparative 

109 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

order and initial prosperity ; leaving it, at his death, 
with various industries, a . considerable trade, and im- 
portant institutions of education and religion. Gus- 
tavus Adolphus gave to the country thus partially re- 
generated an eminence as signal as it was brief in 
European affairs. A typical Northman, with his fair 
skin, clear gray eyes, and the golden hair which 
crowned his gigantic stature, he broke upon Germany 
in the midst of the agony of its Thirty Years' "War, 
beat back the imperial banners from their near ap- 
proach to the German Ocean, and, in two years of 
rapid victory, turned the entire current of the strife. 
He swept fortresses into his grasp, as the reaper binds 
his sheaves. The armies of Tilly were pulverized be- 
fore him. He entered Munich in triumph ; Nurem- 
berg and Naumburg amid a welcome that frightened 
him, it was so much like worship. And when he 
died, accidentally killed in the fog at Liitzen, in 1632, 
he left the most signal example in modern times of 
heroic design, of far-sighted audacity, of the conquer- 
ing force which lies in faith. 

"When he left Sweden he said to his chancellor: 
" Henceforth there remains for me no rest, except the 
eternal ; " and it was true. But, before he left, he 
had not only founded a university at home, and given 
large impulse to industry and to commerce, but had 
chartered a colony fo# this country, with liberal pro- 
vision, and an unbounded faith and hope. After his 
death, the great minister, Oxenstiern — most prescient 
and masterful of the statesmen of the time — furthered 
the colony, and would have built it into greatness, but 
for the subsequent decline of the kingdom, under the 
eccentric and self-willed Christina. Then it was ab- 

110 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

sorbecl, as you know, by the Dutch. But so far as it 
contributed, as to some extent it did, to the early 
civilized life on these shores, it simply augmented the 
previous forces of personal energy, public education, 
constructive skill, and a free faith, for which the woods 
had here retired to make room ; and the fact that it was 
planned by him whose flashing fame filled Europe with 
amaze, connects it with heroic memories, and casts a 
certain reflected splendor upon our early popular life. 
The Germans, who speedily followed the Swedes, 
though their large immigration was later in beginning, 
were of the same spirit. The war, which had covered 
a whole generation, in which three-fourths of the 
people had perished, and three-fourths of the houses 
had been destroyed, — which had given, as Archbishop 
Trench points out, the new word " plunder " to the 
English language, 1 and which had been marked by 
atrocities so awful that history shudders to recite them, 
— had not, after all, exterminated the temper at which 
it was aimed. It had given, as Trench has also ob- 
served, the largest contribution of any period to 
the Protestant hymn-book of Germany. Those who 
survived it, while fiercer than ever against the tyran- 
nies which they had fought, were more eager than 
ever to replace the prosperities which the war had 
destroyed. The wilderness around them, which man 
had made, was less inviting than the wilderness be- 
yond seas, which God had left for man to conquer. 

1 ' ' This "War has left a very characteristic deposit in our language, 
iu the word ' plunder, ' which first appeared in English about the year 
1642-3, having been brought hither from Germany by some of the 
many Scotch and English who had served therein ; for so Fuller as- 
sures us." — Lect. on "Social Aspects of the Thirty Years' War." 

Ill 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

So they came hither ; bringing with them the courage, 
the purpose and the hope, which all the fire that ran 
along the ground, and the iron hail that had broken 
the branches of every tree, had only burned and 
beaten deeper into their minds. 

They came for expanded opportunity ; for liberty 
of development, and the chance of a more rewarding 
work. Wherever they touched the American coast 
they set the seeds of that new civilization which had 
found in Germany its early incentives, and for which 
they and their fathers had fought, through a strife 
without precedent in severity and in length. 

The same was true of the Scotch and Scotch-Irish, 
who came in rapidly increasing numbers after the 
close of the seventeenth century. The Earl of Stirling 
had received, by royal charter, as early as 1621, a 
grant of the territory still known to the world as 
" Nova Scotia," and had subsequently sent some colo- 
nists to its shores ; but the small settlement soon dis- 
appeared, and those who afterward emigrated from 
Scotland, for many years, were inclined to seek homes 
in the north of Ireland, rather than on these distant 
coasts. The comparatively few families from the 
lowland shires, who had come hither before 1664, had 
mingled inseparably with the English emigrants, 
whom they closely resembled, and are scarcely to be 
discriminated from them. 1 

'"The population of Scotland (1603), with the exception of the 
Celtic tribes which were thinly scattered over the Hebrides, and over 
the mountainous parts of the northern shires, was of the same blood 
with the population of England, and spoke a tongue which did not 
differ from the purest English more than the dialects of Somersetshire 
and Lancashire differed from each other." — Macaulay, History of Eng- 
land, Vol. 1, page 65. 

112 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

The four or five hundred Scotch prisoners whom 
Cromwell sent to Boston, in 1651, after the battles of 
Dunbar and Worcester, were, of course, discontented 
in their involuntary exile, and appear to have left no 
permanent impression on the unfolding life of the 
colonies. When Kobert Barclay, of Ury, was gov- 
ernor of New Jersey, in 1683, he secured the emigra- 
tion of numbers of his countrymen to that attractive 
and fertile province, though, it is said, " with some 
difficulty and importunity. For, although the great 
bulk of the nation was suffering the rigors of tyranny, 
for their resistance to the establishment of prelacy, 
they were reluctant to seek relief in exile from their 
native land." 1 

But when the hundred and twenty families came, 
in 1719, to Boston, Portland, and elsewhere, the an- 
cestors of whom, a century before, had emigrated from 
Argyleshire to Londonderry and Antrim in the north 
of Ireland, and by part of whom Londonderry, in New 
Hampshire, was speedily settled, — and when others 
followed, as to Georgia in 1736, to North Carolina in 
1746, to South Carolina in 1763, — they came to stay. 
They changed their skies, but not their minds. They 
brought the exact and stern fidelity to religious con- 
viction, the national pride, the hatred of tyranny, the 
frugal, hardy, courageous temper which were to them 
an ancestral inheritance. Their strong idiosyncrasy 
maintained itself stubbornly, but their practical spirit 
was essentially in harmony with that of the colonists 
who had preceded them ; and when the hour of sum- 
mons came, no voices were earlier or more emphatic 

1 Gordon's History of New Jersey, Chap. iv. 
S. 113 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

for dissolving all connection with Great Britain than 
were those of the men whose ancestors, in 1638, had 
eagerly signed the " National Covenant " in the Grey- 
friars' churchyard, or forty years afterward had faced 
Claverhouse and his dragoons at Loudon-hill, or 
Monmouth and his troops at Both well-bridge. 

So, also, the Bohemian Protestants, who were here 
in 1656 ; the "Waldenses, who were on Staten Island 
and elsewhere in the same year ; the German Quakers, 
by whom Germantown, in Pennsylvania, was settled, 
in 1684 ; the three thousand Germans, sent out to the 
Hudson Eiver in 171 0, and who afterward established 
their prosperous homes at Schoharie, and along the 
inviting Mohawk meadows ; the Salzburg exiles, who 
had crossed Europe from Augsburg " singing psalms," 
and who finally found a home in Georgia, in 1734 : — 
all were essentially similar in spirit, industrious, or- 
derly, devout, faithful to their religion, with a resolute 
purpose to live and work in unhindered freedom. 
Each small migration added its increment to the swell- 
ing force of the various but sympathetic population of 
the colonies. Each element had its separate value, its 
proper strength ; and all were ready, when the final 
fires of war broke forth, to combine with each other, 
as the many metals, fused together and intimately 
commingling, were wrought into one magnificent 
amalgam, in the famous and precious Corinthian brass. 

Even the rough and rapid outline of this fragmen- 
tary review illustrates the extent to which the century 
passing so signally over Europe impressed its charac- 
ter on this continent. Twenty-five years after New 
Amsterdam had been submitted to the English, at least 
two hundred thousand Europeans are computed to 

114 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

have had their home in this country, representing, for 
the most part, the several peoples which I have named. 
The future nation was then fully commenced. It had 
only thenceforth to work and grow. It was formed 
of plain people. Its wealth was small and its culture 
not great. It had been hardly noticed, at first, amid 
the swift changes of states and dynasties with which 
Europe was dazzled. But the forces which it contained 
represented an illustrious ancestry. It is no exagger- 
ation to say that the most energetic life of the world, 
up to that era, w r as reproduced in it. We have thought 
of it, too commonly, as composed of men who had 
simply come here in zeal for an opinion, or to escape 
the fierce inquest of tyranny. It was a broader tem- 
per which brought them, an ampler purpose which 
they came to serve. The push of a century was be- 
hind them; eager, aggressive, sweeping out to new 
conquests on unknown coasts. It had seen such 
changes in Northern Europe as only its vehement en- 
ergy could have wrought ; and now, with seemingly 
careless hand, using the impulse of various motives, it 
had flung into space a separate people, infused with its 
temper, alive with its force. 

In its constituent moral life, that people was one, 
though gradually formed, and drawn from regions so 
remote. It was fearless, reflective, energetic, construct- 
ive, by its birthright ; at once industrious and martial ; 
intensely practical, politically active, religiously free. 
There was, almost, a monotony of force in it. It ac- 
cepted no hereditary leaders, and kept those whom it 
elected within careful limitations. It gave small prom- 
ise of esthetic sensibility, with the dainty touch of 
artistic taste ; but it showed from the outset a swift 

115 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

and far-sighted common sense. It was vital with ex- 
pectation ; having the strongest ancestral attachments, 
yet attracted by the Future more than by the Past, 
and always looking to new success and larger work. 
It was hospitable, of course, to all newcomers, giving 
reception in New England, as well as here, to even the 
Jesuit and his mass ; * but it absorbed only what har- 
monized with it, was indifferent to the rest. It was 
sensible of God and his providence over it ; but en- 
tirely aware of the value of possessions, and profoundly 
resolved to have the power which they impart. It was 
the heir to a great Past. It had before it the perilous 
uncertainties of an obscure Future. But any philoso- 
pher, considering it at that point, with a mind as in- 
tent and reflective as Burke's, would have said, I think, 
without hesitation, that its Future must respond to the 
long preparation ; that the times before it must match 
the times out of which it had come, and take impress 
from the lands whose tongues and temper it combined. 
If that strong stock, selected from so many peoples, 
and transferred to this continent at that critical time, 
was not destined thenceforth to grow, till the little 
one became a thousand, and the small one a strong na- 
tion, there is no province for anticipation in public 
affairs, and " the philosophy of history " is a phrase 
without meaning. 

The after-training which met it here was precisely 
such, you instantly observe, as befitted its origin, and 
carried on the development which was prophesied in 
its nature. It was an austere, protracted training ; not 
beautiful, but beneficent ; of labor, patience, legisla- 

J See Parkman's "Jesuits of North America," pages 322-7. 
116 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

tion, war. As the colonies had been planted according 
to the wise maxim of Bacon — " the people wherewith 
you plant ought to be gardeners, ploughmen, laborers, 
smiths, carpenters, joiners, fishermen, fowlers, with 
some few apothecaries, surgeons, cooks, and bakers," 1 
— so they were trained for practical service, for long 
endurance, for the arts of industry, not of beauty, for 
ultimate oneness as a nation, and a powerful impres- 
sion upon mankind. 

Incessant labor was their primary teacher ; universal 
in its demands, in effect most salutary. If they had 
been idle men, supplied with abundant resources from 
abroad, a something mystical and dark would have 
penetrated their spirit, from the pathless forests which 
stretched around, from the lonely seas which lay be- 
hind, from the fierceness of the elements, from their 
sense of dislocation from all familiar historic lands. 
There was, in fact, something of this. Certain pas- 
sages in their history, certain parts of their writings, 
are only explained by it. It would have been general, 
and have wrought a sure public decline, except for the 
constant corrective of their labor. They would have 
seen, oftener than they did, phantom armies fighting 
in the clouds, fateful omens in aurora and comet. 2 The 

1 Essay xxxiii; " of Plantations. " 

2 "The Aurora Borealis, the beauty of the northern sky, which is 
now gazed upon with so much delight, was seen for the first time in 
New England in 1721, and filled the inhabitants with alarm. Super- 
stition beheld with terror its scarlet hues, and transformed its waving 
folds of light, moving like banners along the sky, into harbingers of 
coming judgment, and omens of impending havoc. Under its brilliant 
reflection, the snow, the trees, and every object, seemed to be dyed 
with blood, and glowed like fire." — Barstow's Hist, of New Hamp- 
shire, Chap. vii. 

117 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

dread of witchcraft, still prevalent in the old world, 
would more widely have fevered their minds. The 
voice of demons would have oftener been heard, in the 
howl of wolves, or the winds wailing among the pines. 
But the sweat of their brows medicined their minds. 
The work which was set for them was too difficult and 
vast to allow such tendencies to get domination. 

A continent was before them to be subdued, and 
with few and poor instruments. With axe and hoe, 
mattock and plough, they were to conquer an unde- 
fined wilderness, untouched, till then, by civilized in- 
dustry ; with no land behind to which to retreat, with 
only the ocean and the sand-hills in the rear. 

It was a tremendous undertaking ; greater than any 
infant people had ever encountered ; greater, for- 
tunately, than they themselves knew at the time. 
Plutarch tells us that Stasicrates once proposed to 
Alexander to have Mount Athos carved into a statue 
of himself ; a copious river flowing from one hand, and 
a city of thousands of people in the other ; the iEgean 
archipelago stretching outward from the feet. Even 
the ambition which decreed Alexandria, and made 
Asia its vassal, might have pleased itself with a fancy 
so colossal. But it was trifling, compared with the 
work which the colonists of this country were called 
to take up ; as a Macedonian bay, compared with the 
ocean on which their rugged continent looked. Upon 
that continent they were to impress the likeness of 
themselves. What Europe had only partially realized, 
after its centuries of advancing civilization, the}^ and 
their children were suddenly to repeat, fashioning the 
wilderness to the home of commonwealths. 

The strain of the work was prodigious and unceas- 

118 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

ing. ~No wonder that the applications of science have 
always had a charm for Americans ! ~No wonder that 
" impossible " has ever since seemed here a foolish 
word ! But the muscle which was built, in both body 
and will, was as tough and tenacious as the work was 
enormous. 

They had to secure, — by invention, where English 
policy permitted, by purchase, where it did not, — what- 
ever they needed for the comfort of life, and whatever 
means of culture they possessed. Their fisheries were 
pushed along the jagged, tempestuous coasts, till they 
struck the icy barriers of the pole. Their commerce 
was cultivated, against the jealousy of the English 
legislation, till, in Burke's time, you see to what it had 
grown. They had to establish their own free schools ; 
to found and enlarge their needed colleges ; to supplv 
themselves with such literature at home as could be 
produced, in the pauses of their prodigious labor ; to 
import from the old world what their small means en- 
abled them to buy. 

They had their chartered liberties to maintain, 
against royal hostility, in the face of governors who 
hindered and threatened, if they did not — like Andros 
— compel the clerks of their assemblies to write 
" Finis " midway on the records. 1 So it happened to 



ia His Excellency, Sir Edmund Andros, Knight, Captain-General 
and Governor of his Majesty's Territory and Dominion in New Eng- 
land, by order from his Majesty, King of England, Scotland, and Ire- 
land, the 31st of October, 1687, took into his hands the government of 
this colony of Connecticut, it being by his Majesty annexed to the 
Massachusetts and other Colonies, under his Excellency's government. 
FINIS." — Secretary Allyn's record; quoted by Palfrey, Vol. Ill, 
page 545. 

119 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

them, according to Milton's ideal plan for a perfect 
education. " The next remove," he says, " must be to 
the study of politics ; to know the beginning, end, and 
reason of political societies ; that they may not, in a 
dangerous fit of the Commonwealth, be such poor, 
shaken, uncertain reeds, of such a tottering conscience, 
as many of our great counselors have lately showed 
themselves, but steadfast pillars of the State." The 
plain men who had come here from Europe, and who 
had before them a wilderness to be conquered, were 
trained according to this generous philosophy. A 
large practical sovereignty had to be in their hands, 
from the beginning, for their self-preservation. They 
established offices, enacted laws, organized a militia, 
waged war, coined money ; and the lessons which they 
learned, ' of legislative prudence, administrative skill, 
bore abundant fruit in that final Revolution which did 
not spring from accident or from passion, which was 
born of debate, which was shaped by ideas, and which 
vindicated itself by majestic state papers. 

Their military tuition was as constant as their work. 
Against the Indians, against the French, somewhere 
or other, as we look back, they seem to have been 
always in arms — so uncertain and brief were their in- 
tervals of peace. Not always threatened violence to 
themselves, sometimes the remote collisions and en- 
tanglements of European politics, involved them in 
these wars — as in that great one which commenced in 
the question of the Austrian Succession, and which 
swept through our untrodden woods its trail of fire ; 
when, as Macaulay says of Frederick, " that he might 
rob a neighbor whom he had promised to defend, black 
men fought on the coasts of Coromandel, and red men 

120 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

scalped each other by the great lakes of North 
America." Precisely as the colonies grew, any power 
hostile to Great Britain was incited to attack them. 
At some point or other, therefore, the straggling and 
interrupted line of their scanty possessions was lighted 
with conflagration, vocal with volleys, dripping with 
blood, clown almost to the day of the Revolution. 

But from this incessant martial training came prac- 
tised skill in the use of weapons, a cool courage, a 
supreme self-reliance, — the temper which looks from 
many portraits, which faced emergencies without a 
fear, and whose fire withered the British ranks at 
Concord bridge and on Breed's Hill. 

There is not much that is picturesque in the annals 
which cover the hundred years after New Amsterdam 
became New York. They look, to the world, perhaps 
to us, for the most part, commonplace. Volcanic 
regions are the more picturesque in landscape forms, 
because of the sudden violence of the forces which 
have shattered and reset them. The legends cling to 
rugged peaks. The pinnacles of Pilatus incessantly 
attract them, while they slide from the smoother slopes 
of Righi. So a convulsive and violent history, full of 
reaction, fracture, catastrophe, appeals to the imag- 
ination as one never does that is quiet and gradual, 
where a people moves forward in steady advance, and 
the sum of its accomplishment is gradually built of 
many particulars. There was not much in the career 
of the colonists, in the hundred years before the 
Revolution, which poetry would be moved to cele- 
brate, or whose attractive pictorial aspects the painter 
would make haste to sketch. 

But the discipline answered its purpose better than 

121 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

if it had been pictorial, tragic. It was apt to the in- 
born temper of the colonists. It fortified in them 
that hardy and resolute moral life which they had 
brought. It guarded the forces which were their 
birthright from waste and loss. The colony of Suri- 
nam, under tropical skies — where mahogany was a 
fire- wood, and the Tonquin-bean, with its swift sweet- 
ness, perfumed the air; where sugar and spices are 
produced without limit, and coffee and cotton have re- 
turned to the planter two crops a year — this seemed, 
at the time, a prodigal recompense for the colony of 
New Netherland. But Guiana demoralized the men 
who possessed it; while the harder work, under 
harsher heavens, gave an empire to those who adhered 
to these coasts. No unbought luxuries became to them 
as dazzling and deadly Sabine gifts. No lazy and 
voluptuous life, as of tropical islands, dissolved their 
manhood. Their little wealth was wrested from the 
wilderness, or won from the seas ; and the cost of its 
acquirement measured its permanence. They were, as 
a people, honest and chaste, because they were workers. 
Their ways might be rough, their slang perhaps strong. 
But no prevalence among them of a prurient fiction 
inflamed their passions ; no fescennine plays blanched 
the bloom of their modesty. Their discipline was 
Spartan, not Athenian ; but it made their life robust 
and sound. The sharp hellebore cleansed their heads 
for a more discerning practical sense. They never had 
to meet what Carlyle declares the present practical 
problem of governments : " given, a world of knaves, 
to educe an honesty from their united action." 

As their numbers increased, and their industry be- 
came various, the sense of independence of foreign 

122 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

countries was constantly nurtured. The feeling of in- 
ward likeness and sympathy among themselves, the 
tendencies to combine in an organic union, grew al- 
ways more earnest. Patriotism was intensified into a 
passion ; since, if any people owned their lands, cer- 
tainly they did, who had hewn out their spaces amid 
the woods, had purchased them not with wampum 
but with work, had fertilized them with their own 
blood. And, at last, trained by labor and by war, by 
educational influences, Christian teachings, legislative 
responsibilities, commercial success, — at last, the spirit 
which they had brought, which in Europe had been 
resisted and thwarted until its force was largely 
broken, but which here had not died, and had not de- 
clined, but had continued diffused as a common life 
among them all, — this made their separate establish- 
ment in the world a necessity of the time. "Mon- 
archy unaccountable is the worst sort of tyranny, and 
least of all to be endured by free-born men " — that 
was a maxim of Aristotle's politics, twenty centuries 
before their Congress. It had been repeated and em- 
phasized by Milton, while the ancestors of those as- 
sembled in the Congress were fighting for freedom 
across the seas. 1 Holland had believed it, and Prot- 



1 Milton had added other words, in the same great discourse of Lib- 
erty, which might have served as a motto for the Congress convened 
at Philadelphia, just a hundred years after his death : 

" And surely they that shall boast, as we do, to be a free nation, and 
not to have in themselves the power to remove or to abolish any gover- 
nor, supreme or subordinate, with the government itself upon urgent 
causes, may please their fancy with a ridiculous and painted freedom, 
fit to cozen babies, but are indeed under tyranny and servitude, as 
wanting that power which is the root and source of all liberty, to dis- 

123 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

estant German} r , as well as England. It became the 
vivid and illuminating conviction of the people here 
gathered ; and in its light the Republic dawned. The 
foregleams of that were playing already along the 
horizon, while Burke was speaking. Before his words 
had reached this country, the small red rim was pal- 
pable on the eastern sky, showing the irresistible up- 
spring of that effulgent yet temperate day which 
never since has ceased to shine. 

All this was the work of that early distinctive 
American Spirit, so rich in its history, so manifold in 
its sources, so supreme in its force. It had not been 
born of sudden passion. It was not the creature of 
one school of theology. It had had no narrow insular 
origin. It was richer and broader than Burke himself 
discerned it to be. Holland and France, as well as 
England, had contributed to it. From the age of 
Elizabeth, and of William the Silent, of Henry TV 
and Gustavus Adolphus, it had burst forth upon these 
shores. It had here been working for a century and 
a half, before the Stamp Act. It had wrought in 
Europe for three generations, before the first hemlock 
hut sheltered a white face between Plymouth and 
Jamestown. It had been born of vehement struggle, 
vast endurance, sublime aspiration, heroic achieve- 
ment : and on this reserved continent of the future 
God gave it room, incentive, training. Assault did 
not destroy it here. Reaction did not waste it. It 
flourished more royally, because transplanted. At 



pose and economize in the land which God hath given them, as mas- 
ters of family in their own house and free inheritance." — The Tenure 
of Kings and Magistrates. 

124 



THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT 

last it sent back of its inherent, perennial life, to re- 
vive the lands from which at the outset it had come. 

The work of that spirit is what we inherit. It was 
that which got its coveted relief from paying three- 
pence a pound upon tea, by erecting another empire 
in the world. It was that which counseled, wrought, 
and fought, from the first Congress to the last capit- 
ulation. It is that which every succeeding reminis- 
cence, in the coming crowded centennial years, will 
constantly recall. It is that which interlinks our 
annals with those of the noblest time in Europe, and 
makes us heirs to the greatness of its history. It is 
that which shows the providence of Him who is the 
eternal Master-builder of states and peoples, and the 
reach of whose plan runs through the ages ! 

The patriot's duty, the scholar's mission, the phil- 
anthropist's hope, are illustrated by it. For as long 
as this spirit survives among us, uncorrupted by lux- 
ury, unabated by time, no matter what the strife of 
parties, no matter what the commercial reverse, in- 
stitutions which express it will be permanent here as 
the mountains and the stars. "When this shall fail, if 
fail it does, it will not need a foreign foe, it will not 
ask domestic strife, to destroy our liberties. Of them- 
selves they will fall ; as the costly column, whose base 
has rotted ; as the mighty frame, whose life has gone ! 

May He who brought it, still maintain it, that 
when others are gathered here, a hundred years hence, 
to review the annals not yet written, they may have 
only to trace the unfolding of its complete and sov- 
ereign life ! 



125 



Ill 

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
AND THE EFFECTS OF IT 



An Oration delivered before the citizens of New York in the 
Academy of Music, at the celebration of the Centennial Anniversary, 
July 4, 1876. 



Ill 

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
AND THE EFFECTS OF IT 



Me. Pkesident : Fellow Citizens : 

The long-expected day has come, and passing 
peacefully the impalpable line which separates ages, 
the Republic completes its hundredth year. The pre- 
dictions in which affectionate hope gave inspiration to 
political prudence are fulfilled. The fears of the 
timid, and the hopes of those to whom our national 
existence is a menace, are alike disappointed. The 
fable of the physical world becomes the fact of the 
political ; and after alternate sunshine and storm, 
after heavings of the earth which only deepened its 
roots, and ineffectual blasts of lightning whose lurid 
threat died in the air, under a sky now raining on it 
benignant influence, the century-plant of American 
Independence and popular government bursts into 
this magnificent blossom, of a joyful celebration il- 
luminating the land ! 

With what desiring though doubtful expectation 
those whose action we commemorate looked for the 
possible coming of this day, we know from the records 
which they have left. With what anxious solicitude 
the statesmen and the soldiers of the following gener- 
ation anticipated the changes which might take place 
before this centennial year should be reached, we have 

I 129 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

heard ourselves, in their great and fervent admonitory 
words. How dim and drear the prospect seemed to 
our own hearts fifteen years since, when, on the 
fourth of July, 1861, the Thirty-seventh Congress met 
at "Washington with no representative in either house 
from any State south of Tennessee and "Western Vir- 
ginia, and when a determined and numerous army, 
under skilful commanders, approached and menaced 
the Capital and the government, — this we surely 
have not forgotten ; nor how, in the terrible years 
which followed, the blood and fire, and vapor of 
smoke, seemed oftentimes to swim as a sea, or to rise 
as a wall, between our eyes and this anniversary. 

" It cannot outlast the second generation from 
those who founded it " was the exulting conviction of 
the many who loved the traditions and state of mon- 
archy, and who felt them insecure before the widen- 
ing fame in the world of our prosperous Kepublic. 
" It may not reach its hundredth year " was the deep 
and sometimes the sharp apprehension of those who 
felt, as all of us felt, that their own liberty, welfare, 
hope, with the brightest political promise of the world, 
were bound up with the unity and the life of our 
nation. Never was solicitude more intense, never w T as 
prayer to Almighty God more fervent and constant — 
not in the earliest beginnings of our history, when 
Indian ferocity threatened that history with a swift 
termination, not in the days of supremest trial amid 
the Revolution — than in those years when the nation 
seemed suddenly split asunder, and forces which had 
been combined for its creation were clenched and 
rocking back and forth in bloody grapple on the 
question of its maintenance. 

130 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

The prayer was heard. The effort and the sacrifice 
have come to their fruitage ; and to-day the nation — 
still one, as at the start, though now expanded over 
such immense spaces, absorbing such incessant and di- 
verse elements from other lands, developing within it 
opinions so conflicting, interests so various, and forms 
of occupation so novel and manifold — to-day the na- 
tion, emerging from the toil and the turbulent strife, 
with the earlier and the later clouds alike swept out 
of its resplendent stellar arch, pauses from its work to 
remember and rejoice ; with exhilarated spirit to an- 
ticipate its future ; with reverent heart to offer to God 
its great Te Deum. 

Not here alone, in this great city, whose lines have 
gone out into all the earth, and whose superb progress 
in wealth, in culture, and in civic renown, is itself the 
most illustrious token of the power and beneficence of 
that frame of government under which it has been 
realized ; not alone in yonder, I had almost said ad- 
joining, city, whence issued the paper that first an- 
nounced our national existence, and where now rises 
the magnificent Exposition, testifying for all progress- 
ive States to their respect and kindness toward us, 
the radiant clasp of diamond and opal on the girdle of 
the sympathies which interweave their peoples with 
ours ; not alone in Boston, the historic town, first in 
resistance to British aggression, and foremost in plans 
for the new and popular organization, one of whose 
citizens wrote his name, as if cutting it with a plough- 
share, at the head of all on our great charter, another 
of whose citizens was its intrepid and powerful cham- 
pion, aiding its passage through the Congress; not 
there alone, nor yet in other great cities of the land, 

131 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

but in smaller towns, in villages and hamlets, this day 
will be kept, a secular Sabbath, sacred alike to memory 
and to hope. 

Not only, indeed, where men are assembled, as we 
are here, will it be honored. The lonely and remote 
will have their part in this commemoration. Where 
the boatman follows the winding stream, or the wood- 
man explores the forest shades ; where the miner lays 
down his eager drill beside rocks which guard the pre- 
cious veins ; or where the herdsman, along the sierras, 
looks forth on the seas which now reflect the rising 
day, which at our midnight shall be gleaming like gold 
in the setting sun — there also will the day be regarded, 
as a day of memorial. The sailor on the sea will note 
it, and dress his ship in its brightest array of flags and 
bunting. Americans dwelling in foreign lands will 
note and keep it. 

London itself will to-day be more festive because of 
the event which a century ago shadowed its streets, 
incensed its Parliament, and tore from the crown of 
its obstinate King the chiefest jewel. On the boule- 
vards of Paris, in the streets of Berlin, and along the 
leveled bastions of Yienna, at Marseilles and at Flor- 
ence, upon the silent liquid ways of stately Venice, in 
the passes of the Alps, under the shadow of church 
and obelisk, palace and ruin, which still prolong the 
majesty of Rome ; yea, further East, on the Bosphorus, 
and in Syria ; in Egypt, which writes on the front of 
its compartment in the great Exhibition, " The oldest 
people of the world sends its morning-greeting to the 
youngest nation ; " along the heights behind Bombay, 
in the foreign hongs of Canton, in the " Islands of the 
Morning," which found the dawn of their new age in 

132 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

the startling sight of an American squadron entering 
their bays — everywhere will be those who have 
thought of this day, and who join with us to greet its 
coming. 

No other such anniversary, probably, has attracted 
hitherto such general notice. You have seen Rome, 
perhaps, on one of those shining April days when the 
traditional anniversary of the founding of the city fills 
its streets with civic processions, with military display, 
and the most elaborate fireworks in Europe ; you may 
have seen Holland, in 1872, when the whole country 
bloomed with orange on the three-hundredth anniver- 
sary of the capture by the sea-beggars of the city of 
Briel, and of the revolt against Spanish domination 
which thereupon flashed on different sides into sudden 
explosion. But these celebrations, and others like 
them, have been chiefly local. The world outside has 
taken no wide impression from them. This of ours is 
the first of which many lands, in different tongues, 
will have had report. Partly because the world is 
narrowed in our time, and its distant peoples are made 
neighbors, by the fleeter machineries now in use; 
partly because we have drawn so many to our popula- 
tion from foreign lands, while the restless and acquisi- 
tive spirit of our people has made them at home on 
every shore ; but partly, also, and essentially, because 
of the nature and the relations of that event which we 
commemorate, and of the influence exerted by it on 
subsequent history, the attention of men is more or less 
challenged, in every center of commerce and of thought, 
by this anniversary. 

Indeed it is not unnatural to feel — certainly it is not 
irreverent to feel — that they who by wisdom, by 

133 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

valor, and by sacrifice, have contributed to perfect and 
maintain the institutions which we possess, and have 
added by death as well as by life to the luster of our 
history, must also have an interest in' this day ; that in 
their timeless habitations they remember us beneath 
the lower circle of the heavens, are glad in our joy, 
and share and lead our grateful praise. To a spirit 
alive with the memories of the time, and rejoicing in 
its presage of nobler futures, recalling the great, the 
beloved, the heroic, who have labored and joyfully died 
for its coming, it will not seem too fond an enthusiasm 
to feel that the air is quick with shapes we cannot see, 
and glows with faces whose light serene we may not 
catch ! They who counseled in the Cabinet, they who 
defined and settled the law in decisions of the Bench, 
they who pleaded with mighty eloquence in the Sen- 
ate, they who poured out their souls in triumphant 
effusion for the liberty which they loved in forum or 
pulpit, they who gave their young and glorious life as 
an offering on the field, that government for the peo- 
ple, and by the people, might not perish from the' 
earth — it cannot be but that they too have part and 
place in this Jubilee of our history ! God make our 
doings not unworthy of such spectators ! and make our 
spirit sympathetic with theirs from whom all selfish 
passion and pride have now forever passed away ! 

The interest which is felt so distinctly and widely in 
this anniversary reflects a light on the greatness of the 
action which it commemorates. It shows that we do 
not unduly exaggerate the significance or the impor- 
tance of that ; that it had really large, even world- 
wide relations, and contributed an effective and a val- 
uable force to the furtherance of the cause of freedom, 

134 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

education, humane institutions, and popular advance- 
ment, wherever its influence has been felt. Yet when 
we consider the action itself, it may easily seem but 
slight in its nature, as it was certainly commonplace in 
its circumstances. There was nothing even pictur- 
esque in its surroundings, to enlist for it the pencil of 
the painter, or help to fix any luminous image of that 
which was done on the popular memory. 

In this respect it is singularly contrasted with other 
great and kindred events in general history ; with 
those heroic and fruitful actions in English history 
which had especially prepared the way for it, and 
with which the thoughtful student of the past will 
always set it in intimate relations. Its utter simplic- 
ity, as compared with their splendor, becomes im- 
pressive. 

"When, five centuries and a half before, on the fif- 
teenth of June, and the following days, in the year of 
our Lord 1215, the English barons met King John in 
the long meadow of Runnymede, and forced from him 
the Magna Charta — the strong foundation and stead- 
fast bulwark of English liberty, concerning which Mr. 
Hallam has said in our own time that " all which has 
been since obtained is little more than as confirmation 
or commentary,' 1 — no circumstance was wanting, of 
outward pageantry, to give dignity, brilliance, impress- 
iveness, to the scene. On the one side was the king, 
with the bishops and nobles who attended him, with 
the Master of the Templars, and the papal legate be- 
fore whom he had lately rendered his homage. * On 
the other side was the great and determined majority 
of the barons of England, with multitudes of knights, 

15, A. D. 1213. 
135 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

armed vassals, and retainers. l "With them in purpose, 
and in resolute zeal, were most of those who attended 
the king. Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, the head of the English clergy, was with them ; 
the Bishops of London, Winchester, Lincoln, Roches- 
ter, and of other great sees. The Earl of Pembroke, 
dauntless and wise, of vast and increasing power in 
the realm, and not long after to be its Protector, was 
really at their head. Robert Pitz-Walter, whose fair 
daughter Matilda the profligate king had forcibly ab- 
ducted, was Marshal of the army — the "Army of God, 
ahd the Holy Church." William Longsword, Earl of 
Salisbury, half-brother of the King, was on the field ; 
the Earls of Albermarle, Arundel, Gloucester, Here- 
ford, Norfolk, Oxford, the great Earl Warenne, who 
claimed the same right of the sword in his barony 
which William the Conqueror had had in the king- 
dom, the Constable of Scotland, Hubert de Burgh, 
seneschal of Poictou, and many other powerful nobles, 
— descendants of the daring soldiers whose martial 
valor had mastered England, Crusaders who had fol- 
lowed Richard at Ascalon and at Jaffa, whose own 
liberties had since been in mortal peril. Some bur- 
gesses of London were present, as well ; troubadours, 
minstrels, and heralds were not wanting; and doubt- 
less there mingled with the throng those skilful clerks 

1 " Quant a ceux qui se trouvaient du cote des batons, il n'est ni n6- 
cessaire ni possible de les enumerer, puisque toute la noblesse d'An- 
gleterre reunie en un seul corps, ne pouvait tomber sous le calcul. 
Lorsque les pretentions des revoltes eurent ete debattues, le roi Jean, 
comprenant son inferiorite vis-a-vis des forces de ses barons, accorda 
sans resistance les lois et liberty qu'on lui demandait, et les confirma 
par la charte. "— Chronique de Matt. Paris, trad, par A. Huillard- 
Br6holles. Tome Troisieme, pages 6, 7. 

136 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

whose pens had drawn the great instrument of freedom, 
and whose training in language had given a remarkable 
precision to its exact clauses and cogent terms. 

Pennons and banners streamed at large, and spear- 
heads gleamed, above the host. The June sunshine 
flashed reflected from inlaid shield and mascled armor. 
The terrible quivers of English yeomen hung on their 
shoulders. The voice of trumpets, and clamoring 
bugles, was in the air. The whole scene was vast as a 
battle, though bright as a tournament ; splendid, but 
threatening, like burnished clouds, in which lightnings 
sleep. The king, one of the handsomest men of the 
time, though cruelty, perfidy and every foul passion 
must have left their traces on his face, was especially 
fond of magnificence in dress ; wearing, we are told, 
on one Christmas occasion, a rich mantle of red satin, 
embroidered with sapphires and pearls, a tunic of white 
damask, a girdle lustrous with precious stones, and a 
baldric from his shoulder, crossing his breast, set with 
diamonds and emeralds, while even his gloves, as in- 
deed is still indicated on his fine effigy in Worcester 
cathedral, bore similar ornaments, the one a ruby, the 
other a sapphire. 

Whatever was superb, therefore, in that consum- 
mate age of royal and baronial state, whatever was 
splendid in the glittering and grand apparatus of 
chivalry, whatever was impressive in the almost more 
than princely pomp of prelates of the Church, — 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 
And all that beauty, all that wealth can give, — 

all this was marshaled on that historic plain in Surrey, 
where John and the barons faced each other, where 
Saxon king and Saxon earl had met in council before 

137 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

the Norman had footing in England; and all com- 
bined to give a fit magnificence of setting to the great 
charter there granted and sealed. 

The tower of "Windsor — not of the present castle 
and palace, but of the earlier detached fortress which 
already crowned the cliff, and from which John had 
come to the field — looked down on the scene. On the 
one side, low hills enclosed the meadow ; on the 
other, the Thames flowed brightly by, seeking the 
capital and the sea. Every feature of the scene was 
English, save one ; but over all loomed, in a porten- 
tous and haughty stillness, in the ominous presence 
of the envoy from Eome, that ubiquitous power, 
surpassing all others, which already had once laid 
the kingdom under interdict, and had exiled John 
from church and throne, but to which later he had 
been reconciled, and on which now he secretly relied 
to annul the charter which he was granting. 

The brilliant panorama illuminates the page which 
bears its story. It rises still as a vision before one, 
as he looks on the venerable parchment originals, 
preserved to our day in the British Museum. If it be 
true, as Hallam has said, that from that era a new soul 
was infused into the people of England, it must be 
confessed that the place, the day, and all the circum- 
stances of that new birth were fitting to the great and 
the vital event. 

That age passed away, and its peculiar splendor of 
aspect was not thereafter to be repeated. Yet when, 
four hundred years later, on the seventh of June, 1 

1 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, Charles I, 1628-9. 
Kushworth's Hist. Coll. Charles I, page 625. 

It is rather remarkable that neither Hume, Clarendon, Hallam, De 

138 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

1628, the Petition of Eight, the second great charter 
of the liberties of England, was presented by Parlia- 
ment to Charles the First, the scene and its accessories 
were hardly less impressive. 

Into that law — called a Petition, as if to mask the 
deadly energy of its blow upon tyranny — had been 
collected by the skill of its framers all the heads of 
the despotic prerogative which Charles had exer- 
cised, that they might all be smitten together, with 
one tremendous destroying stroke. The king, en- 
throned in his chair of state, looked forth on those 
who waited for his word, as still he looks, with his 
forecasting and melancholy face, from the canvas of 
Yan Dyck. Before him were assembled the nobles 
of England, in peaceful array, and not in armor, but 
with a civil power in their hands which the older 
gauntlets could not have held, and with the mem- 
ories of a long renown almost as visible to themselves 
and to the king as were the tapestries suspended on 
the walls. 

Crowding the bar, behind these descendants of the 
earlier barons, were the members of the House of 
Commons, with whom the law now presented to the 

Lolme, nor Macaulay, mentions this date, though all recognize the 
capital importance of the event. It does not appear in even Knight's 
Popular History of England. Miss Aikin, in her Memoirs of the 
Court of Charles I, gives it as June 8, (Vol. I, p. 216) ; and Cham- 
bers' Encyclopaedia, which ought to be careful and accurate in regard 
to the dates of events in English history, says, under the title "Petition 
of Eights : " "At length, on both Houses of Parliament insisting on a 
fuller answer, he pronounced an unqualified assent in the usual form 
of words, 'Soit fait comme il est desire,' on the 26th of June, 1628." 
The same statement is repeated in the latest Revised Edition of that 
Encyclopaedia. Lingard gives the date correctly. 

139 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

king had had its origin, and whose boldness and tenac- 
ity had constrained the peers, after vain endeavor to 
modify its provisions, to accept them as they stood. 
They were the most powerful body of representatives 
of the kingdom that had yet been convened; pos- 
sessing a private wealth, it was estimated, surpassing 
threefold that of the Peers, and representing not less 
than they the best life, and the oldest lineage, of the 
kingdom which they loved. 

Their dexterous, dauntless and far-sighted sagacity 
is yet more evident, as we look back, than their wealth 
or their breeding ; and among them were men whose 
names will be familiar while England continues. 
Wentworth was there, soon to be the most dangerous 
of traitors to the cause of which he was then the 
champion, but who then appeared as resolute as ever 
to vindicate the ancient, lawful and vital liberties of 
the kingdom; and Pym was there, the unsurpassed 
statesman, who, not long afterward, was to warn the 
dark and haughty apostate that he never again would 
leave pursuit of him so long as his head stood on his 
shoulders. 1 Hampden was there, considerate and 
serene, but inflexible as an oak ; once imprisoned 
already for his resistance to an unjust taxation, and 
ready again to suffer and to conquer in the same 
supreme cause. Sir John Eliot was there, eloquent 
and devoted, who had tasted also the bitterness of 
imprisonment, and who, after years of its subsequent 
experience, was to die a martyr in the Tower. Coke 
was there, seventy-seven years of age, but full of fire 
as full of fame, whose vehement and unswerving hand 
had had chief part in framing the Petition. Selden 

1 Welwood's Memorials, quoted in Forster's Life of Pym, page 62. 

140 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

was there, the repute of whose learning was already 
continental. Sir Francis Seymour, Sir Kobert Philips, 
Strode, Hobart, Denzil Holies, and Valentine — such 
were the commoners ; and there, at the outset of a 
career not imagined by either, faced the king a silent 
young member who had come now to his first Parlia- 
ment, at the age of twenty-nine, from the borough of 
Huntingdon, Oliver Cromwell. 

In a plain cloth suit he probably stood among his 
colleagues. But they were often splendid, and even 
sumptuous, in dress ; with slashed doublets, and cloaks 
of velvet, with flowing collars of rich lace, the swords 
with flashing hilts by their sides in embroidered belts, 
their very hats jeweled and plumed, the abundant 
dressed and perfumed hair falling in curls upon their 
shoulders. Here and there may have been those who 
still more distinctly symbolized their spirit, with steel 
corselets, overlaid with lace and rich embroidery. 

So stood they in the presence, representing to the 
full the wealth and genius and stately civic pomp of 
Eno-land, until the king had pronounced his assent, 
in the express customary form, to the law which con- 
firmed the popular liberties; and when, on hearing 
his unequivocal final assent, they burst into loud, even 
passionate acclamations of victorious joy, there had 
been from the first no scene more impressive in that 
venerable Hall, whose history went back to Edward 
the Confessor. 

In what sharp contrast with the rich ceremonial and 
the splendid accessories of these preceding kindred 
events, appears that modest scene at Philadelphia, 
from which we gratefully date to-day a hundred years 
of constant and prosperous national life ! 

141 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

In a plain room, of an unpretending and recent 
building — the lower east room of what then was a 
State-house, what since has been known as the " In- 
dependence Hall " — in the midst of a city of perhaps 
thirty thousand inhabitants — a city which preserved 
its rural aspect, and the quaint simplicity of whose 
plan and structures had always been marked among 
American towns — were assembled probably less than 
fifty persons to consider a paper prepared by a young 
Virginia lawyer, giving reasons for a Resolve which 
the assembly had adopted two days before. They 
were farmers, planters, lawyers, physicians, surveyors 
of land, with one eminent Presbyterian clergyman. 
A majority of them had been educated at such 
schools, or primitive colleges, as then existed on this 
continent, while a few had enjoyed the rare advantage 
of training abroad, and foreign travel ; but a consider- 
able number, and among them some of the most in- 
fluential, had had no other education than that which 
they had gained by diligent reading while at their 
trades or on their farms. 

The figure to which our thoughts turn first is that 
of the author of the careful paper on the details of 
which the discussion turned. It has no special maj- 
esty or charm, the slight tall frame, the sunburned 
face, the gray eyes spotted with hazel, the red hair 
which crowns the head ; but already, at the age of 
thirty-three, the man has impressed himself on his 
associates as a master of principles, and of the lan- 
guage in which those principles find expression, 
so that his colleagues have left to him, almost wholly, 
the work of preparing the important Declaration. 
He wants readiness in debate, and so is now silent ; 

142 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

but he listens eagerly to the vigorous argument and 
the forcible appeals of one of his fellows on the com- 
mittee, Mr. John Adams, and now and then speaks 
with another of the committee, much older than him- 
self — a stout man, with a friendly face, in a plain 
dress, whom the world already had heard something 
of as Benjamin Franklin. These three are perhaps 
most prominently before us as we recall the vanished 
scene, though others were there of fine presence and 
cultivated manners, and though all impress us as 
substantial and respectable representative men, how- 
ever harsh the features of some, however brawny 
their hands with labor. But certainly nothing could 
be more unpretending, more destitute of pictorial 
charm than that small assembly of persons for the 
most part quite unknown to previous fame, and half 
of whose names it is not probable that half of us in 
this assembly could now repeat. 

After a discussion somewhat prolonged, as it 
seemed at the time, especially as it had been con- 
tinued from previous days, and after some minor 
amendments of the paper, toward evening it was 
adopted, and ordered to be sent to the several 
States, signed by the president and the secretary; 
and the simple transaction was complete. Whatever 
there may have been of proclamation and bell-ringing 
appears to have come on subsequent days. It was 
almost a full month before the paper was en- 
grossed and signed by the members. It must have 
been nearly or quite the same time before the news 
of its adoption had reached the remoter parts of the 
land. 

If pomp of circumstances were necessary to make 

143 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

an event like this great and memorable, there would 
have been others in our own history more worthy far 
of our commemoration. As matched against multi- 
tudes in general history, it would sink into instant 
and complete insignificance. Yet here, to-day, a 
hundred years from the adoption of that paper, in 
a city which counts its languages by scores, and beats 
with the tread of a million feet, in a country whose 
enterprise flies abroad over sea and land on the rush 
of engines not then imagined, in a time so full of 
exciting hopes that it hardly has leisure to contem- 
plate the past, we pause from all our toil and traffic, 
our eager plans and impetuous debate, to commemo- 
rate the event. The whole land pauses, as I have 
said; and some distinct impression of it will follow 
the sun, wherever he climbs the steep of heaven, 
until in all countries it has more or less touched the 
thoughts of men. 

Why is this ? is a question, the answer to which 
should interpret and vindicate our assemblage. 

It is not simply because a century happens to have 
passed since the event thus remembered occurred. 
A hundred years are always closing from some event, 
and have been since Adam was in his prime. There 
was, of course, some special importance in the action 
then accomplished — in the nature of that action, 
since not in its circumstances — to justify such long 
record of it ; and that importance it is ours to define. 
In the perspective of distance the small things dis- 
appear, while the great and eminent keep their place. 
As Carlyle has said: "A king in the midst of his 
bodyguards, with his trumpets, war-horses, and gilt 
standard-bearers, will look great though he be little ; 

144 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

only some Roman Cams can give audience to satrap 
ambassadors, while seated on the ground, with a 
woolen cap, and supping on boiled pease, like a 
common soldier." * 

What was, then, the great reality of power in what 
was done a hundred years since, which gives it its 
masterful place in history — makes it Roman and 
regal amid all its simplicity ? 

Of course, as the prime element of its power, it 
was the action of a people, and not merely of per- 
sons ; and such action of a people has always a 
momentum, a public force, a historic significance, 
which can pertain to no individual arguments and 
appeals. There are times, indeed, when it has the 
energy and authority in it of a secular inspiration ; 
when the supreme soul which rules the world comes 
through it to utterance, and a thought surpassing 
man's wisest plan, a will transcending his strongest 
purpose, is heard in its commanding voice. 

It does not seem extravagant to say that the time 
to which our thoughts are turned was one of these. 

For a century and a half the emigrants from Eu- 
rope had brought hither, not the letters alone, the 
arts and industries, or the religious convictions, but 
the hardy moral and political life, which had there 
been developed in ages of strenuous struggle and 
work. France and Germany, Holland and Sweden, 
as well as England, Scotland and Ireland, had con- 
tributed to this. The Austrian Tyrol, the Bavarian 
highlands, the Bohemian plain, Denmark, even Por- 
tugal, had had their part in this colonization. The 
ample domain which here received the earnest im- 

1 Essay on Schiller. Essays : Vol. II, page 301. 
j 145 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

migrants had imparted to them of its own oneness ; 
and diversities of language, race and custom, had 
fast disappeared in the governing unity of a common 
aspiration, and a common purpose to work out 
through freedom a nobler well-being. 

The general moral life of this people, so various 
in origin, so accordant in spirit, had only risen to 
grander force through the toil and strife, the austere 
training, the long patience of endurance, to which it 
here had been subjected. The exposures to heat 
and cold and famine, to unaccustomed labors, to al- 
ternations of climate unknown in the old world, to 
malarial forces brooding above the mellow and drain- 
less recent lands — these had fatally stricken many ; 
but those who survived were tough and robust, the 
more so, perhaps, because of the perils which they 
had surmounted. Education was not easy, books 
were not many, and the daily newspaper was un- 
known; but political discussion had been always 
going on, and men's minds had gathered unconscious 
force as they strove with each other, in eager de- 
bate, on questions concerning the common welfare. 
They had had much experience in subordinate legis- 
lation, on the local matters belonging to their care ; 
had acquired dexterity in performing public business, 
and had often had to resist or amend the suggestions 
or dictates of royal governors. For a recent people, 
dwelling apart from older and conflicting states, they 
had had a large experience in war, the crack of the 
rifle being never unfamiliar along the near frontier, 
where disciplined skill was often combined with savage 
f ury to sweep with sword or scar with fire their scat- 
tered settlements. 

146 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

By every species, therefore, of common work, of 
discussion, endurance and martial struggle, the de- 
scendants of the colonists scattered along the Ameri- 
can coast had been allied to each other. They were 
more closely allied than they knew. It needed only 
some signal occasion, some summons to a sudden 
heroic decision, to bring them into instant general 
combination ; and Huguenot and Hollander, Swede, 
German and Protestant Portuguese, as well as Eng- 
lishman, Scotchman, Irishman, would then forget 
that their ancestors had been different, in the su- 
preme consciousness that now they had a common 
country, and before all else were all of them Ameri- 
cans. 

That time had come. That consciousness had for 
fifteen years been quickening in the people, since the 
"Writs of Assistance" had been applied for and 
granted, in 1761, when Otis, resigning his honorable 
position under the crown, had flung himself against 
the alarming innovation with an eloquence as blast- 
ing as the stroke of the lightning which in the end 
destroyed his life. With every fresh invasion by 
England of their popular liberties, with every act 
which threatened such invasion by providing oppor- 
tunity and the instruments for it, the sense of a com- 
mon privilege and right, of a common inheritance in 
the country they were fashioning out of the forest, of 
a common place in the history of the world, had 
been increased among the colonists. They were 
plain people, with no strong tendencies to the ideal. 
They wanted only a chance for free growth; but 
they must have that, and have it together, though 
the continent cracked. The diamond is formed, it 

147 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

has sometimes been supposed, under a swift enor- 
mous pressure of masses meeting and forcing the 
carbon into a crystal. The ultimate spirit of the 
American colonists was formed in like manner ; the 
weight of a rocky continent beneath, the weight of 
an oppression only intolerable because undefined 
pressing on it from above. But now that spirit of 
inestimable price, reflecting light from every angle, 
and harder to be broken than anything material, was 
suddenly shown in acts and declarations of conven- 
tions and assemblies from the Penobscot to the St. 
Mary's. 

Any commanding public temper, once established 
in a people, grows bolder, of course, more inquisitive 
and inventive, more sensible of its rights, more de- 
termined on its future, as it comes more frequently 
into exercise. This in the colonies lately had had 
the most significant of all its expressions, up to that 
point, in the resolves of popular assemblies that the 
time had come for a final separation from the king- 
dom of Great Britain. The eminent Congress of two 
years before had given it powerful reinforcement. 
Now, at last, it entered the representative American 
assembly, and claimed from that the ultimate word. 
It found what it sought. The Declaration was only 
the voice of that supreme, impersonal force, that will 
of communities, that universal soul of the State. 

The vote of the colony then thinly covering a part 
of the spaces not yet wholly occupied by this great 
State, was not, indeed, at once formally given for 
such an instrument. It was wisely delayed, under 
the judicious counsel of Jay, till a provincial Congress 
could assemble, specially called, and formally author- 

148 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

ized, to pronounce the deliberate resolve of the colony ; 
and so it happened that only twelve colonies voted at 
first for the great Declaration, and that New York 
was not joined to the number till five days later. But 
Jay knew, and all knew, that numerous, wealthy, 
eminent in character, high in position as were those 
here and elsewhere in the country — in Massachusetts, in 
Yirginia and in the Carolinas — who were by no means 
yet prepared to sever their connection with Great 
Britain, the general and governing mind of the people 
was fixed upon this, with a decision which nothing 
could change, with a tenacity which nothing could break. 
The forces tending to that result had wrought to their 
development with a steadiness and strength which the 
stubbornest resistance had hardly delayed. The spirit 
which now shook light and impulse over the land was 
recent in its precise demand, but as old in its birth as 
the first Christian settlements ; and it was that spirit — 
not of one, nor of fifty, not of all the individuals in 
all the conventions, but the vaster spirit which lay be- 
hind — which put itself on sudden record through the 
prompt and accurate pen of Jefferson. 

He was himself in full sympathy with it, and only 
by reason of that sympathy could give it such con- 
summate expression. Not out of books, legal re- 
searches, historical inquiry, the careful and various 
studies of language, came that document; but out 
of repeated public debate, out of manifold personal 
and private discussion, out of his clear sympathetic 
observation of the changing feeling and thought of 
men, out of that exquisite personal sensibility to 
vague and impalpable popular impulses which was in 
him innately combined with artistic taste, an ideal 

149 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

nature, and rare power of philosophical thought. 
The voice of the cottage as well as the college, of 
the church as well as the legislative assembly, was 
•in the paper. It echoed the talk of the farmer in 
homespun, as well as the classic eloquence of Lee, 
or the terrible tones of Patrick Henry. It gushed at 
last from the pen of its writer, like the fountain from 
the roots of Lebanon, a brimming river when it issues 
from the rock ; but it was because its sources had 
been supplied, its fulness filled, by unseen springs ; 
by the rivulets winding far up among the cedars, and 
percolating through hidden crevices in the stone ; by 
melting snows, whose white sparkle seemed still on 
the stream ; by fierce rains, with which the basins 
above were drenched ; by even the dews, silent and 
wide, which had lain in stillness all night upon the hill. 
The Platonic idea of the development of the State 
was thus realized here; first Ethics, then Politics. 
A public opinion, energetic and dominant, took its 
place from the start as the chief instrument of the 
new civilization. No dashing maneuver of skilful 
commanders, no sudden burst of popular passion, 
was in the Declaration; but the vast mystery of a 
supreme and imperative public life, at once diffused 
and intense — behind all persons, before all plans, 
beneath which individual wills are exalted, at whose 
touch the personal mind is inspired, and under whose 
transcendent impulse the smallest instrument becomes 
of a terrific force. That made the Declaration ; and 
that makes it now, in its modest brevity, -take its 
place with Magna Charta and the Petition of Right, 
as full as they of vital force, and destined to a parallel 
permanence. 

150 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

Because this intense common life of a determined 
and manifold people was not behind them, other 
documents, in form similar to this, and in polish and 
cadence of balanced phrase perhaps its superiors, have 
had no hold like that which it keeps on the memory 
of men. What papers have challenged the attention 
of mankind within the century, in the stately Spanish 
tongue, in Mexico, New Granada, Yenezuela, Bolivia, 
or the Argentine Republic, which the world at large 
has now quite forgotten ! How the resonant procla- 
mations of German or of French Republicans, of 
Hungarian or Spanish revolutionists and patriots, 
have vanished as sound absorbed in the air! Elo- 
quent, persuasive, just, as the} 7 " were, with a vigor of 
thought, a fervor of passion, a fine completeness and 
symmetry of expression, in which they could hardly be 
surpassed, they have now only a literary value. They 
never became great general forces. They were weak, 
because they were personal ; and history is too crowded, 
civilization is too vast, to take much impression from 
occasional documents. Only then is a paper of secu- 
lar force, or long remembered, when behind it is the 
ubiquitous energy of the popular will, rolling through 
its words in vast diapason, and charging its clauses 
with tones of thunder. 

Because such an energy was behind it, our Declara- 
tion had its majestic place and meaning ; and they 
who adopted it saw nowhere else 

So rich advantage of a promised glory, 

As smiled upon the forehead of their action. 

Because of that, we read it still, and look to have it 
as audible as now, among the dissonant voices of the 

151 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

world, when other generations, in long succession, 
have come and gone ! 

But further, too, it must be observed that this 
paper, adopted a hundred years since, was not merely 
the declaration of a people, as distinguished from 
eminent and cultured individuals — a confession before 
the world of the public State-faith, rather than a 
political thesis — but it was also the declaration of a 
people which claimed for its own a great inheritance 
of equitable laws, and of practical liberty, and which 
now was intent to enlarge and enrich that. It had 
roots in the past, and a long genealogy ; and so it had 
a vitality inherent, and an immense energy. 

They who framed it went back, indeed, to first 
principles. There was something philosophic and ideal 
in their scheme, as always there is when the general 
mind is deeply stirred. It was not superficial. Yet 
they were not undertaking to establish new theories, 
or to build their state upon artificial plans and abstract 
speculations. They were simply evolving out of the 
past what therein had been latent; were liberating 
into free exhibition and unceasing activity a vital 
force older than the history of their colonization, and 
wide as the lands from which they came. They had 
the sweep of vast impulses behind them. The slow 
tendencies of centuries came to sudden consummation 
in their Declaration ; and the force of its impact upon 
the affairs and the mind of the world was not to be 
measured by its contents alone, but by the relation in 
which these stood to all the vehement discussion and 
struggle of which it was the latest outcome. 

This ought to be, always, distinctly observed. 

The tendency is strong, and has been general, 

152 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

among those who have introduced great changes in 
the government of states, to follow some plan of po- 
litical, perhaps of social innovation, which enlists their 
judgment, excites their fancy, and to make a comely 
theoretic habitation for the national household, rather 
than to build on the old foundations, — expanding the 
walls, lifting the height, enlarging the doorways, en- 
lightening with new windows the halls, but still keep- 
ing the strength and renewing the age of an old 
familiar and venerated structure. You remember 
how in France, in 1789, and the following years, the 
schemes of those whom Napoleon called the " ideolo- 
gists " succeeded each other, no one of them gaining a 
permanent supremacy, though each included impor- 
tant elements, till the armed consulate of 1799 swept 
them all into the air, and put in place of them one 
masterful genius and ambitious will. You remember 
how in Spain, in 1812, the new Constitution pro- 
claimed by the Cortes was thought to inaugurate with 
beneficent provisions a wholly new era of develop- 
ment and progress ; yet how the history of the splen- 
did peninsula, from that day to this, has been but the 
record of a struggle to the death between the Old and 
the New, the contest as desperate, it would seem, in 
our time as it was at the first. 

It must be so, always, when a preceding state of 
society and government, which has got itself estab- 
lished through many generations, is suddenly super- 
seded by a different fabric, however more evidently 
conformed to right reason. The principle is not so 
strong as the prejudice. Habit masters invention. 
The new and theoretic shivers its force on the obsti- 
nate coherence of the old and the established. The 

153 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

modprn structure fails and is replaced, while the grim 
feudal keep, though scarred and weather-worn, the 
very cement seeming gone from its walls, still scowls 
defiance at the red right-hand of the lightning itself. 

It was no such rash speculative change which here 
was attempted. The people whose deputies framed 
our Declaration were largely themselves descendants 
of Englishmen; and those who were not, had lived 
long enough under English institutions to be impressed 
with their tendency and spirit. It was therefore only 
natural that even when adopting that ultimate measure 
which severed them from the British crown, they 
should retain all that had been gained in the mother- 
land through centuries of endurance and strife. They 
left nothing that was good ; they abolished the bad, 
added the needful, and developed into a rule for the 
continent the splendid precedents of great former 
occasions. They shared still the boast of Englishmen 
that their constitution " has no single date from which 
its duration is to be reckoned," and that " the origin 
of the English law is as undiscoverable as that of the 
Nile." They went back themselves, for the origin of 
their liberties, to the most ancient muniments of 
English freedom. Jefferson had affirmed, in 1774, that 
a primitive charter of American Independence lay in 
the fact that as the Saxons had left their native wilds 
in the north of Europe, and had occupied Britain — the 
country which they left asserting over them no further 
control, nor any dependence of them upon it — so the 
Englishmen coming hither had formed, by that act, 
another state, over which Parliament had no rights, in 
which its laws were void till accepted. 1 

1 Works, Vol. I, page 125. 
154 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

But while seeking for their liberties so archaic a 
basis, neither he nor his colleagues were in the least 
careless of what subsequent times had done to com- 
plete them. There was not one element of popular 
right, which had been wrested from crown and noble 
in any age, which they did not keep ; not an equitable 
rule, for the transfer or the division of property, for 
the protection of personal rights, or for the detection 
and punishment of crime, which was not precious in 
their eyes. Even chancery jurisdiction they widely 
retained, with the distinct tribunals, derived from the 
ecclesiastical courts, for probate of wills ; and English 
technicalities were maintained in their courts, almost 
as if they were sacred things. Especially that equality 
of civil rights among all commoners, which Hallam 
declares the most prominent characteristic of the 
English Constitution — the source of its permanence, its 
improvement, and its vigor — they perfectly preserved ; 
they only more sharply affirmatively declared it. In- 
deed, in renouncing their allegiance to the king, and 
putting the United Colonies in his place, they felt them- 
selves acting in intimate harmony with the spirit and 
drift of the ancient constitution. The Executive here 
was to be elective, not hereditary, to be limited and 
not permanent in the term of his functions ; and no 
established peerage should exist. But each State re- 
tained its governor, its legislature, generally in two 
houses, its ancient statute and common law ; and if 
they had been challenged for English authority for 
their attitude toward the crown, they might have re- 
plied in the words of Bracton, the Lord Chief-Justice 
five hundred years before, under the reign of Henry 
III, that " the law makes the king ; " " there is no 

155 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

king, where will, and not law, bears rule ; " " if the 
king were without a bridle, that is the law, they ought 
to put a bridle upon him." 1 They might have replied 
in the words of Fox, speaking in Parliament, in daring 
defiance of the temper of the House, but with many 
supporting him, when he said that in declaring In- 
dependence, they " had done no more than the English 
had done against James the Second." 2 

They had done no more; though they had not 
elected another king in place of him whom they re- 
nounced. They had taken no step so far in advance 
of the then existing English Constitution as those 
which the Parliament of 1640 took in advance of 
the previous Parliaments which Charles had dissolved. 

1 Ipse autem rex non debet esse sub homine, sed sub Deo et sub 
Lege, quia Lex facit regem. Attribuat igitur rex Legi quod Lex 
attribuit ei, videlicet dominationem et potestatem, non est enim rex ubi 
dominatur voluntas et non Lex. — De Leg. et Cons. Angliae ; Lib. I, 
cap. 8, page 5. 

Eex autem babet superiorem, Deum. Item, Legem, per quam factus 
est rex. Item, curiam suam, videlicet comites, Barones, quia comites 
dicuntur quasi socii regis, et qui babet socium babet magistrum ; et 
ideo si rex fuerit sine fraenb, i. e.sine Lege, debent eifraenum ponere ; 
etc. — Lib. II, cap. 16, page 3. 

Tbe following is still more explicit : "As tbe head of a body natural 
cannot change its nerves and sinews, cannot deny to the several parts 
their proper energy, their due proportion and aliment of blood ; 
neither can a King, who is the head of a body politic, change the laws 
thereof, nor take from the people what is theirs by right, against their 
consent. . . . For he is appointed to protect his subjects in their 
lives, properties, and laws ; for this very end and purpose he has the 
delegation of power from the people, and he has no just claim to any 
other power but this." — Sir John Fortescue's Treatise, De Laudibus 
Legum Angliae, c. 9, [about A. D. 1470,] quoted by Hallam, Mid. 
Ages, Chap, viii, part III. 

2 Speech of October 31, 1776: "The House divided on the amend- 
ment. Yeas, 87 ; nays, 242." 

156 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

If there was a right more rooted than another in that 
Constitution, it was the right of the people which was 
taxed to have its vote in the taxing legislature. If 
there was anything more accordant than another with 
its historic temper and tenor, it was that the authority 
of the king was determined when his rule became 
tyrannous. Jefferson had but perfectly expressed the 
doctrine of the lovers of freedom in England for 
many generations, when he said in his Summary View 
of the Rights of America, in 1774, that " the monarch 
is no more than the chief officer of the people, appointed 
by the laws, and circumscribed with definite powers, 
to assist in working the great machine of government, 
erected for their use, and consequently subject to their 
superintendence ; " that " kings are the servants, not 
the proprietors of the people ; " and that a nation 
claims its rights, " as derived from the laws of nature, 
not as the gift of their chief magistrate." 1 

That had been the spirit, if not as yet the formu- 
lated doctrine, of Raleigh, Hampden, Russell, Sydney 
— of all the great leaders of liberty in England. Mil- 
ton had declared it, in a prose as majestic as any pas- 
sage of the Paradise Lost. The commonwealth had 
been built on it; and the whole revolution of 1688. 
And they who now framed it into their permanent or- 
ganic law, and made it supreme in the country they 
were shaping, were in harmony with the noblest in- 

1 Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees for the 
people, and if the cause, the interest and trust, is insidiously betrayed, 
or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the au- 
thority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute abler and 
better agents, attorneys and trustees. — John Adams. Dissertation 
on Canon and Feudal Law ; 1765. Works : Vol. Ill, pages 456-7. 

157 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

spirations of the past. They were not innovating 
with a rash recklessness. They were simply accept- 
ing and reaffirming what they had learned from lu- 
minous events and illustrious men. So their work 
had a dignity, a strength and a permanence which 
can never belong to mere fresh speculation. It inter- 
locked with that of multitudes going before. It de- 
rived a virtue from every field of struggle in Eng- 
land ; from every scaffold, hallowed by free and con- 
secrated blood ; from every hour of great debate. It 
was only the* complete development into law, for a 
separated people, of that august ancestral liberty, the 
germs of which had preceded the Heptarchy, the grad- 
ual definition and establishment of which had been 
the glory of English history. A thousand years 
brooded over the room where they asserted heredi- 
tary rights. Its walls showed neither portraits nor 
mottoes; but the Kaiser-saal at Erankfurt was not 
hung around with such recollections. No titles were 
worn by those plain men; but there had not been 
one knightly soldier, or one patriotic and prescient 
statesman, standing for liberty in the splendid centu- 
ries of its English growth, who did not touch them 
with unseen accolade, and bid them be faithful. The 
paper which they adopted, fresh from the pen of its 
young author, and written on his hired pine table, 
was already, in essential life, of a venerable age ; and 
it took immense impulse, it derived an instant and 
vast authority, from its relation to that undying past 
in which they too had grand inheritance, and from 
which their public life had come. 

Englishmen themselves now recognize this, and 
often are proud of it. The distinguished represent- 

158 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

ative of Great Britain at Washington may think his 
government, as no doubt he does, superior to ours ; 
but his clear eye cannot fail to see that English lib- 
erty was the parent of ours, and that the new and 
broader continent here opened before it, suggested 
that expansion of it which we celebrate to-day. His 
ancestors, like ours, helped to build the Eepublic ; and 
its faithfulness to the past, amid all reformations, was 
one great secret of its earliest triumph, has been one 
source, from that day to this, of its enduring and 
prosperous strength. 

The Congress, and the people behind it, asserted 
for themselves hereditary liberties, and hazarded 
everything in the purpose to complete them. . But 
they also affirmed, with emphasis and effect, another 
right, more general than this, which made their action 
significant and important to other peoples, which 
made it, indeed, a signal to the nations of the right of 
each to assert for itself the just prerogative of form- 
ing its government, electing its rulers, ordaining its 
laws, as might to it seem most expedient. Hear again 
the immortal words : " We hold these truths to be self- 
evident ; . . . that to secure these [unalienable] 
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriv- 
ing their just powers from the consent of the gov- 
erned ; that whenever any form of government be- 
comes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the 
people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new 
government, laying its foundations in such principles, 
and organizing its powers in such form, as to them 
shall seem most likely to effect their safety and 
happiness." 

This is what the party of Bentham called " the as- 

159 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

sumption of natural rights, claimed without the 
slightest evidence of their existence, and supported by 
vague and declamatory generalities." This is what 
we receive as the decisive and noble declaration, 
spoken with the simplicity of a perfect conviction, of 
a natural right as patent as the continent ; a declara- 
tion which challenged at once the attention of man- 
kind, and which is now practically assumed as a pre- 
mise in international relations and public law. 

Of course it was not a new discovery. It was old 
as the earliest of political philosophers ; as old, in- 
deed, as the earliest communities, which, becoming 
established in particular locations, had there devel- 
oped their own institutions, and repelled with vehe- 
mence the assaults that would change them. But in 
the growth of political societies, and the vast expan- 
sion of imperial states, by the conquest of those ad- 
jacent and weaker, this right, so easily recognized at 
the outset, so germane to the instincts, so level with 
the reason, of every community, had widely passed 
out of men's thoughts ; and the power of a conquer- 
ing state to change the institutions and laws of a 
people, or impose on it new ones, — the power of a 
parent state to shape the forms and prescribe the 
rules of the colonies which went from it — had been so 
long and abundantly exercised, that the very right of 
the people, thus conquered or colonial, to consult its 
own interests in the frame of its government, had 
been almost forgotten. 

It might be a high speculation of scholars, or a 
charming dream of political enthusiasts. But it was 
not a maxim for the practical statesman ; and what- 
ever its correctness as an ideal principle, it was vain 

160 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

to expect to see it established in a world full of kings 
who claimed, each for himself, an authority from God, 
and full of states intent on grasping and governing 
by their law adjacent domains. The revolt of the 
Netherlands against Spanish domination had been 
the one instance in modern history in which the in- 
herent right of a people to suit itself in the frame of 
its government had been proclaimed, and then main- 
tained ; and that had been at the outset a paroxysmal 
revolt, against tyranny so crushing, and cruelties so 
savage, that they took it out of the line of examples. 
The Dutch Kepublic was almost as exceptional, 
through the fierce wickedness which had crowded it 
into being, as was Switzerland itself, on its Alpine 
heights. For an ordinary state to claim self-regula- 
tion, and found its government on a plebiscite, was to 
contradict precedent, and to set at defiance European 
tradition. 

Our fathers, however, in a somewhat vague way, 
had held from the start- that they had right to an 
autonomy; and that acts of Parliament, if not ap- 
pointments of the crown, took proper effect upon 
these shores only by reason of their assent. Their 
charters were held to confirm this doctrine. The 
conviction, at first practical and instinctive, rather 
than theoretic, had grown with their growth, and had 
been intensified into positive affirmation and public 
exhibition as the British rule impinged more sharply 
on their interests and their hopes. It had finally be- 
come the general and decisive conviction of the col- 
onies. It had spoken already in armed resistance to 
the troops of the king. It had been articulated, with 
gathering emphasis, in many resolves of assemblies 

K 161 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

and conventions. It was now, finally, most ener- 
getically, set forth to the world in the great Declara- 
tion ; and in that utterance, made general, not par- 
ticular, and founding the rights of the people in this 
country on principles as wide as humanity itself, there 
lay an appeal to every nation: — an appeal whose 
words took unparalleled force, were illuminated and 
made rubrical, in the fire and blood of the following 
war. 

"When the Emperor Ferdinand visited Innsbruck, 
that beautiful town of the Austrian Tyrol, in 1838, it 
is said that the inhabitants wrote his name in im- 
mense bonfires, along the sides of the precipitous hills 
which shelter the town. Over a space of four or five 
miles extended that colossal illumination, till the 
heavens seemed on fire in the far-reflected up-stream- 
ing glow. The right of a people, separated from 
others, to its own institutions — our fathers wrote this 
in lines so vivid and so large that the whole world 
could see them ; and they followed that writing with 
the consenting thunders of so many cannon that even 
the lands across the Atlantic were shaken and filled 
with the long reverberation. 

The doctrine had, of course, in every nation, its 
twofold internal application, as well as its front 
against external powers. On the one hand it swept 
with destroying force against the notion, so long 
maintained, of the right of certain families in the 
world, called Hapsburg, Bourbon, Stuart, or whatever, 
to govern the rest ; and wherever it was received it 
made the imagined divine right of kings an obsolete 
and contemptible fiction. On the other hand, it smote 
with equal energy against the pretensions of any mi- 

162 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

nority within the state — whether banded together by 
the ties of descent, or of neighborhood in location, or 
of common opinion, or supposed common interest — to 
govern the rest ; or even to impair the established and 
paramount government of the rest by separating 
themselves organically from it. 

It was never the doctrine of the fathers that the 
people of Kent, Cornwall, or Lincoln, might sever 
themselves from the rest of England, and, while they 
had their voice and vote in the public councils, might 
assert the right to govern the whole, under threat of 
withdrawal if their minor vote were not suffered to 
control. They were not seeking to initiate anarchy, 
and to make it thenceforth respectable in the world 
by support of their suffrages. They recognized the 
fact that the state exists to meet permanent needs, is 
the ordinance of God as well as the family ; and that 
He has determined the bounds of men's habitation, by 
rivers, seas and mountain chains, shaping countries as 
well as continents into physical coherence, while giv- 
ing one man his birth on the north of the Pyrenees, 
another on the south, one on the terraced banks of the 
Ehine, another in English meadow or upland. They 
saw that a common and fixed habitation, in a country 
thus physically defined, especially when combined 
with community of descent, of permanent public in- 
terest, and of the language in which thought is inter- 
changed — that these make a people ; and such a peo- 
ple, as a true and abiding body politic, they affirmed 
had right to shape its government, forbidding others 
to intermeddle. 

But it must be the general mind of the people which 
determined the questions thus involved ; not a dicta- 

163 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

ting class within the state, whether known as peers or 
associated commoners, whether scattered widely, as 
one among several political parties, or grouped to- 
gether in some one section, and having a special inter- 
est to encourage. The decision of the general public 
mind, as deliberately reached, and authentically de- 
clared, that must be the end of debate ; and the right 
of resistance, or the right of division, after that, if 
such right exist, is not to be vindicated from their 
Declaration. Any one who thought such government 
by the whole intolerable to him was always at liberty 
to expatriate himself, and find elsewhere such other 
institutions as he might prefer. But he could not 
tarry, and still not submit. He was not a monarch, 
without the crown, before whose contrary judgment 
and will the public councils must be dumb. While 
dwelling in the land, and having the same opportunity 
with others to seek the amendment of what he disap- 
proved, the will of the whole was binding upon him ; 
and that obligation he could not vacate by refusing to 
accept it. If one could not, neither could ten, nor a 
hundred, nor a million, who still remained a minority 
of the whole. 

To allow such a right would have been to make 
government transparently impossible. Not separate 
sections only, but counties, townships, school districts, 
neighborhoods, must have the same right ; and each 
individual, with his own will for his final law, must be 
the complete ultimate State. 

It was no such disastrous folly which the fathers of 
our Republic affirmed. They ruled out kings, princes, 
peers, from any control over the people ; and they did 
not give to a transient minority, wherever it might 

164 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

appear, on whatever question, a greater privilege, be- 
cause less denned, than that which they jealously 
withheld from these classes. Such a tyranny of irre- 
sponsible occasional minorities would have seemed to 
them only more intolerable than that of classes, or- 
ganized, permanent, and limited by law. And when 
it was affirmed by some, and silently feared by many 
others, that in our late immense civil war the multi- 
tudes who adhered to the old Constitution had forgot- 
ten or discarded the principles of the earlier Declara- 
tion, those assertions and fears were alike • without 
reason. The people which adopted that Declaration, 
when distributed into colonies, was the people which 
afterward, when compacted into states, established the 
Confederation of 1781 — imperfect enough, but whose 
abiding renown it is that under it the war was ended. 
It was the same people which subsequently framed the 
supreme Constitution. " We, the people of the United 
States," do ordain and establish the following Consti- 
tution, — so runs the majestic and vital instrument. It 
contains provisions for its own emendation. When 
the people will, they may set it aside, and put in place 
of it one wholly different ; and no other nation can 
intervene. But while it continues, it, and the laws 
made normally under it, are not subject to resistance 
by a portion of the people, conspiring to direct or 
limit the rest. And whensoever any pretension like 
this shall appear, if ever again it does appear, it will 
undoubtedly as instantly appear that, even as in the 
past so in the future, the people whose our govern- 
ment is, and whose complete and magnificent domain 
God has marked out for it, will subdue resistance, 
compel submission, forbid secession, though it cost 

165 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

again, as it cost before, four years of war, with treas* 
ure uncounted and inestimable life. 

The right of a people upon its own territory, as 
equally against any classes within it or any external 
powers, this is the doctrine of our Declaration. We 
know how it here has been applied, and how settled it 
is upon these shores for the time to come. We know, 
too, something of what impression it instantly made 
upon the minds of other peoples, and how they sprang 
to greet and accept it. In the fine image of Bancroft, 
" the astonished nations, as they read that all men are 
created equal, started out of their lethargy, like those 
who have been exiles from childhood, when they sud- 
denly hear the dimly-remembered accents of their 
mother-tongue." * 

The theory of scholars had now become the maxim 
of a State. The diffused ineffectual nebulous light 
had got itself concentered into an orb ; and the radi- 
ance of it, penetrating and hot, shone afar. You know 
how France responded to it ; with passionate speed 
seeking to be rid of the terrific establishments in 
Church and State which had nearly crushed the life of 
the people, and with a beautiful though credulous un- 
reason trying to lift, by the grasp of the law, into in- 
telligence and political capacity the masses whose 
training for thirteen centuries had been despotic. No 
operation of natural law was any more certain than 
the failure of that too daring experiment. But the 
very failure involved progress from it ; involved, un- 
doubtedly, that ultimate success which it was vain to 
try to extemporize. Certainly the other European 
powers will not again intervene, as they did, to restore 

1 Vol. VIII, page 473. 
166 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

a despotism which France has abjured, and with for- 
eign bayonets to uphold institutions which it does not 
desire. Italy, Spain, Germany, England — they are not 
republican in the form of their government, nor as yet 
democratic in the distribution of power. But each of 
them is as full of this organific, self-demonstrating 
doctrine, as is our own land ; and England would send 
no troops to Canada to compel its submission if it 
should decide to set up for itself. Neither Italy nor 
Spain would maintain a monarchy a moment longer 
than the general mind of the country preferred it. 
Germany would be fused in the fire of one passion if 
any foreign nation whatever should assume to dictate 
the smallest change in one of its laws. 

The doctrine of the proper prerogative of kings, de- 
rived from God, which in the last century was more 
common in Europe than the doctrine of the centrality 
of the sun in our planetary system, is now as obsolete 
among the intelligent as are the epicycles of Ptolemy. 
Every government expects to stand henceforth by as- 
sent of the governed, and by no other claim of right. 
It is strong by beneficence, not by tradition ; and at 
the height of its military successes it circulates appeals, 
and canvasses for ballots. Revolution is carefully 
sought to be averted, by timely and tender ameliora- 
tion of the laws. The most progressive and liberal 
states are most evidently secure ; while those which 
stand, like old olive-trees at Tivoli, with feeble arms 
supported on pillars, and hollow trunks filled up with 
stone, are palpably only tempting the blast. An alli- 
ance of sovereigns, like that called the Holy, for re- 
constructing the map of Europe, and parceling out the 
passive peoples among separate governments, would 

167 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

to-day be no more possible than would Charlemagne's 
plan for reconstructing the empire of the "West. 
Even Murad, Sultan of Turkey, now takes the place 
of Abdul the deposed, " by the grace of God, and the 
will of the people ; " and that accomplished and illus- 
trious Prince, whose empire under the Southern Cross 
rivals our own in its extent, and most nearly ap- 
proaches it on this hemisphere in stability of institu- 
tions and in practical freedom, has his surest title to 
the throne which he honors, in his wise liberality, and 
his faithful endeavor for the good of his people. As 
long as in this he continues, as now, a recognized 
leader among the monarchs — ready to take and seek 
suggestions from even a democratic republic — his 
throne will be steadfast as the water-sheds of Brazil ; 
and while his successors maintain his spirit, no domes- 
tic insurrection will test the question whether they re- 
tain that celerity in movement with which Dom Pedro 
has astonished Americans. 

It is no more possible to reverse this tendency 
toward popular sovereignty, and to substitute for it 
the right of families, classes, minorities, or of inter- 
vening foreign states, than it is to arrest the motion of 
the earth, and make it swing the other way in its an- 
nual orbit. In this, at least, our fathers' Declaration 
has made its impression on the history of mankind. 

It was the act of a people, and not of persons, ex- 
cept as these represented and led that. It was the act 
of a people, not starting out on new theories of gov- 
ernment, so much as developing into forms of law and 
practical force a great and gradual inheritance of 
freedom. It was the act of a people, declaring for 
others, as for itself, the right of each to its own form 

168 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

of government, without interference from other na- 
tions, without restraint by privileged classes. 

It only remains, then, to ask the question how far it 
has contributed to the peace, the advancement, and the 
permanent welfare, of the people by which it was set 
forth ; of other nations which it has affected. And to 
ask this question is almost to answer it. The answer 
is as evident as the sun in the heavens. 

It certainly cannot be affirmed that we in America, 
any more than persons or peoples elsewhere, have 
reached as yet the ideal state, of private liberty com- 
bined with a perfect public order, or of culture com- 
plete, and a supreme character. The political world, 
as well as the religious, since Christ was on earth, 
looks forward, not backward, for its millennium. That 
Golden Age is still to come which is to shine in the 
perfect splendor reflected from Him who is ascended ; 
and no prophecy tells us how long before the advanc- 
ing race shall reach and cross its glowing marge, or 
what long effort, or what tumults of battle, are still to 
precede. 

In this country, too, there have been immense spe- 
cial impediments to hinder wide popular progress in 
things which are highest. Our people have had a con- 
tinent to subdue. They have been, from the start, in 
constant migration. "Westward, from the counties of 
the Hudson and the Mohawk, around the lakes, over 
the prairies, across the great river, — westward still, 
over alkali plains, across terrible canons, up gorges of 
the mountains where hardly the wild goat could find 
footing, — westward always, till the Golden Gate 
opened out on the sea which has been made ten thou- 
sand miles wide, as if nothing less could stop the 

169 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

march, — this has been the popular movement, from 
almost the day of the great Declaration. To-morrow's 
tents have been pitched in new fields ; and last year's 
houses await new possessors. 

"With such constant change, such wide dislocation of 
the mass of the people from early and settled home 
associations, and with the incessant occupation of the 
thoughts by the great physical problems presented, — 
not so much by any struggle for existence, as by har- 
vests for which the prairies waited, by mills for which 
the rivers clamored, by the coal and the gold which 
offered themselves to the grasp of the miner — it would 
not have been strange if a great and dangerous deca- 
dence had occurred in that domestic and private virtue 
of which Home is the nursery, in that generous and 
reverent public spirit which is but the effluence of its 
combined rays. It would have been wholly too much 
to expect that under such influences the highest prog- 
ress should have been realized, in speculative thought, 
in artistic culture, or in the researches of pure science. 

Accordingly, we find that in these departments 
not enough has been accomplished to make our prog- 
ress signal in them, though here and there the 
eminent souls "that are like stars and dwell apart" 
have illumined themes highest with their high inter- 
pretation. But History has been cultivated among 
us, with an enthusiasm, to an extent, hardly, I think, 
to have been anticipated among a people so recent 
and expectant ; and Prescott, Motley, Irving, Tick- 
nor, with him upon whose splendid page all Ameri- 
can history has been amply illustrated, are known as 
familiarly and honored as highly in Europe as here. 
We have had as well distinguished poets, and have 

170 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

them now ; to whom the nation has been responsive ; 
who have not only sung themselves, but through 
whom the noblest poems of the Old World have come 
into the English tongue, rendered in fit and perfect 
music, and some of whose minds, blossoming long ago 
in the solemn or beautiful fancies of youth, with 
perennial energy still ripen to new fruit as they near 
or cross their fourscore years. In Medicine and Law, 
as well as in Theology, in Fiction, Biography, and 
the vivid Narrative of exploration and discovery, the 
people whose birthday we commemorate has added 
something to the possession of men. Its sculptors and 
painters have won high places in the brilliant realm 
of modern art. Publicists like Wheaton, jurists like 
Kent, have gained a celebrity reflecting honor on the 
land ; and if no orator, so vast in knowledge, so pro- 
found and discursive in philosophical thought, so af- 
fluent in imagery, and so glorious in diction, as Ed- 
mund Burke, has yet appeared, we must remember 
that centuries were needed to produce him elsewhere, 
and that any of the great Parliamentary debaters, 
aside from him, have been matched or surpassed in 
the hearing of those who have hung with rapt sym- 
pathetic attention on the lips of Clay, or of Rufus 
Choate, or have felt themselves listening to the mighti- 
est mind which ever touched theirs when they stood 
beneath the imperial voice in which Webster spoke. 

In applied science there has been much done in the 
country, for which the world admits itself our grate- 
ful debtor. I need not multiply illustrations of this, 
from locomotives, printing-presses, sewing-machines, 
revolvers, steam-reapers, bank-locks. One instance 
suffices, most signal of all. 

171 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

When Morse, from "Washington, thirty-two years 
ago, sent over the wires his word to Baltimore, 
"What hath God wrought," he had given to all 
the nations of mankind an instrument the most sen- 
sitive, expansive, quickening, which the world yet 
possesses. He had bound the earth in electric net- 
work. 

England touches India to-day, and France Algeria, 
while we are in contact with all the continents, upon 
those scarcely perceptible nerves. The great strat- 
egist, like Yon Moltke, with these in his hands, from 
the silence of his office directs campaigns, dictates 
marches, wins victories ; the statesman in the cabinet 
inspires and regulates the distant diplomacies ; while 
the traveler in any port or mart is by the same mar- 
vel of mechanism in instant communication with all 
centers of commerce. It is certainly not too much to 
say that no other invention of the world in this cen- 
tury has so richly deserved the medals, crosses and 
diamond decorations, the applause of senates, the gifts 
of kings, which were showered upon its author, as did 
this invention, which finally taught and utilized the 
lightnings whose nature a signer of the great Declara- 
tion had made apparent. 

But after all it is not so much in special inventions, 
or in eminent attainments made by individuals, that 
we are to find the answer to the question, " What 
did that day, a hundred years since, accomplish for 
us?" Still less is it found in the progress we 
have made in outward wealth and material success. 
This might have been made, approximately at least, 
if the British supremacy had here continued. The 
prairies would have been as productive as now, the 

172 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

mines of copper and silver and gold as rich and ex- 
tensive, the coal-beds as vast, and the cotton-fields as 
fertile, if we had been born the subjects of the 
Georges, or of Yictoria. Steam would have kept its 
propulsive force, and sea and land have been theaters 
of its triumph. The river would have been as 
smooth a highway for the commerce which seeks it; 
and the leap of every mountain stream would have 
given as swift and constant a push to the wheels that 
set spindles and saws in motion. Electricity itself 
would have lost no property, and might have become 
as completely as now the fire-winged messenger of 
the thought of mankind. 

But what we have now, and should not have had 
except for that paper which the Congress adopted, 
is the general and increasing popular advancement 
in knowledge, vigor, as I believe, in moral culture, of 
which our country has been the arena, and in which 
lies its hope for the future. The independence of 
the nation has reacted, with sympathetic force, on 
the personal life which the nation includes. It has 
made men more resolute, aspiring, confident, and 
more susceptible to whatever exalts. The doctrine 
that all by creation are equal — not in respect of phys- 
ical force or of mental endowment, of means for cul- 
ture or inherited privilege, but in respect of immortal 
faculty, of duty to each other, of right to protection 
and to personal development, — this has given manli- 
ness to the poor, enterprise to the weak, a kindling 
hope to the most obscure. It has made the individuals 
of whom the nation is composed more alive to the 
forces which educate and exalt. 

There has been incessant motive, too, for the wide 

173 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

and constant employment of these forces. It has 
been felt that, as the people is sovereign here, that 
people must be trained in mind and spirit for its 
august and sovereign function. The establishment 
of common schools, for a needful primary secular 
training, has been an instinct of Society, only recog- 
nized and repeated in provisions of statutes. The 
establishment of higher schools, classical and general, 
of colleges, scientific and professional seminaries, 
has been as well the impulse of the nation, and the 
furtherance of them a care of governments. The 
immense expansion of the press in this country 
has been based fundamentally upon the same im- 
pulse, and has wrought with beneficent general' 
force in the same direction. Eeligious instruction 
has gone as widely as this distribution of secular 
knowledge. 

It used to be thought that a Church dissevered 
from the State must be feeble. "Wanting wealth of 
endowments and dignity of titles — its clergy entitled 
to no place among the peers, its revenues assured by 
no legal enactments — it must remain obscure and 
poor; while the absence of any external limitations, 
of parliamentary statutes and a legal creed, must 
leave it liable to endless division, and tend to its 
speedy disintegration into sects and schisms. It 
seemed as hopeless to look for strength, wealth, be- 
neficence, for extensive educational and missionary 
work, to such churches as these, as to look for aggres- 
sive military organization to a convention of farmers, 
or for the volume and thunder of Niagara to a 
thousand sinking and separate rills. 

But the work which was given to be done in this 

174 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

country was so great and momentous, and has been so 
constant, that matching itself against that work, the 
Church, under whatever name, has realized a strength, 
and developed an activity, wholly fresh in the world 
in modern times. It has not been antagonized by that 
instinct of liberty which alwaj^s awakens against its 
work where religion is required by law. It has seized 
the opportunity. Its ministers and members have had 
their own standards, leaders, laws, and sometimes have 
quarreled, fiercely enough, as to which were the bet- 
ter. But in the work which was set them to do, to 
give to the sovereign American people the knowledge 
of God in the Gospel of his Son, their only strife has 
been one of emulation — to go the furthest, to give the 
most, and to bless most largely the land and its future. 
The spiritual incentive has of course been supreme ; 
but patriotism has added its impulse to the work. It 
has been felt that Christianity is the basis of republi- 
can empire, its bond of cohesion, its life-giving law ; 
that the manuscript copies of the Gospels, sent by 
Gregory to Augustine at Canterbury, and still pre- 
served on sixth century parchments at Oxford and 
Cambridge — more than Magna Charta itself, these are 
the roots of English liberty ; that Magna Charta, and 
the Petition of Right, with our completing Declara- 
tion, were possible only because these had been before 
them. And so in the work of keeping Christianity 
prevalent in the land, all earnest churches have eagerly 
striven. Their preachers have been heard where the 
pioneer's fire scarcely was kindled. Their schools 
have been gathered in the temporary camp, not less 
than in the hamlet or town. They have sent their 
books with lavish distribution, they have scattered 

175 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

their Bibles like leaves of autumn, where settlements 
hardly were more than prophesied. In all languages 
of the land they have told the old story of the Law 
and the Cross, a present Redemption, and a coming 
Tribunal. The highest truths, most solemn and in- 
spiring, have been the truths most constantly in hand. 
It has been felt that, in the highest sense, a muscular 
Christianity was indispensable where men lifted up 
axes upon the thick trees. The delicate speculations 
of the closet and the schools were too dainty for the 
work; and the old confessions of Councils and Re- 
formers, whose undecaying and sovereign energy no 
use exhausts, have been those always most familiar, 
where the trapper on his stream, or the miner in his 
gulch, has found priest or minister on his track. 

Of course not all the work has been fruitful. NTot 
all God's acorns come to oaks, but here and there one. 
Not all the seeds of flowers germinate, but enough to 
make some radiant gardens. And out of all this work 
and gift, has come a mental and moral training, to the 
nation at large, such as it certainly would not have 
had except for this effort, the effort for which would 
not have been made, on a scale so immense, except for 
this incessant aim to fit the nation for its great experi- 
ment of self-regulation. The Declaration of Inde- 
pendence has been the great charter of Public Edu- 
cation ; has given impulse and scope to this prodigious 
missionary work. 

The result of the whole is evident enough. I am 
not here as the eulogist of our people, beyond what 
facts justify. I admit, with regret, that American 
manners sometimes are coarse, and American culture 
often very imperfect; that the noblest examples of 

176 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

consummate training imply a leisure which we have 
not had, and are perhaps most easily produced where 
social advantages are more permanent than here, and 
the law of heredity has a wider recognition. We all 
know, too well, how much of even vice and shame 
there has been, and is, in our national life ; how slug- 
gish the public conscience has been before sharpest ap- 
peals ; how corruption has entered high places in the 
government, and the blister of its touch has been upon 
laws, as well as on the acts of prominent officials. 
And we know the reckless greed and ambition, the 
fierce party spirit, the personal wrangles and jealous 
animosities, with which our Congress has been often 
dishonored, at which the nation — sadder still — has 
sometimes laughed, in idiotic unreason. 

But knowing all this, and with the impression of it 
full on our thoughts, we may exult in the real, steady 
and prophesying growth of a better spirit toward 
dominance in the land. I scout the thought that we 
as a people are worse than our fathers ! John Adams, 
at the head of the War Department, in 1776, wrote 
bitter laments of the corruption which existed in even 
that infant age of the Republic, and of the spirit of 
venality, rapacious and insatiable, which was then the 
most alarming enemy of America. He declared him- 
self ashamed of the age which he lived in ! In Jeffer- 
son's day, all Federalists expected the universal domin- 
ion of French infidelity. In Jackson's day, all Whigs 
thought the country gone to ruin already, as if Mr. 
Biddle had had the entire public hope locked up in the 
vaults of his terminated bank. In Polk's day, the ex- 
citements of the Mexican War gave life and germina- 
tion to many seeds of rascality. There has never been 

L 177 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

a time — not here alone, in any country — when the 
fierce light of incessant inquiry blazing on men in pub- 
lic life, would not have revealed, forces of evil like 
those we have seen, or when the condemnation which 
followed the discovery would have been sharper. And 
it is among my deepest convictions that, with all 
which has happened to debase and debauch it, the na- 
tion at large was never before more mentally vigorous 
or morally sound. 

Gentlemen : The demonstration is around us ! 

This city, if any place on the continent, should have 
been the one where a reckless wickedness should have 
had sure prevalence, and reforming virtue the least 
chance of success. Starting in 1790 with a white pop- 
ulation of less than thirty thousand — growing steadily 
for forty years, till that population had multiplied six- 
fold — taking into itself, from that time on, such mul- 
titudes of emigrants from all parts of the earth that 
the dictionaries of the languages spoken in its streets 
would make a library — all forms of luxury coming 
with wealth, and all means and facilities for every 
vice — the primary elections being always the seed-bed 
out of which springs its choice of rulers, with the in- 
fluence which it sends to the public councils — its citi- 
zens so absorbed in their pursuits that oftentimes, for 
years together, large numbers of them have left its 
affairs in hands the most of all unsuited to so supreme 
and delicate a trust — it might well have been expected 
that while its docks were echoing with a commerce 
which encompassed the globe, while its streets were 
thronged with the eminent and the gay from all parts 
of the land, while its homes had in them uncounted 
thousands of noble men and cultured women, while its 

178 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

stately squares swept out year by year across new 
spaces, while it founded great institutions of benefi- 
cence, and shot new spires upward toward heaven, 
and turned the rocky waste to a pleasure-ground fa- 
mous in the earth, its government would decay, and 
its recklessness of moral ideas, if not as well of political 
principles, would become apparent. 

Men have prophesied this, from the outset till now. 
The fear of it began with the first great advance of 
the wealth, population and fame of the city; and 
there have not been wanting facts in its history which 
served to renew, if not to justify, the fear. 

But when the War of 1861 broke on the land, and 
shadowed every home within it, this city, — which had 
voted by immense majorities against the existing ad- 
ministration, and which was linked by unnumbered 
ties with the vast communities then rushing to assail 
it, — flung out its banners from window and spire, from 
City Hall and newspaper office, and poured its wealth 
and life into the service of sustaining the government, 
with a swiftness and a vehement energy that were 
never surpassed. When, afterward, greedy and 
treacherous men, capable and shrewd, deceiving the 
unwary, hiring the skilful, and moulding the very 
law to their uses, had concentrated in their hands the 
government of the city, and had bound it in seemingly 
invincible chains, while they plundered its treasury,— 
it rose upon them, when advised of the facts, as Sam- 
son rose upon the Philistines ; and the two new cords 
that were upon his hands no more suddenly became as 
flax that was burnt than did those manacles' imposed 
upon the city by the craft of the Ring. 
Its leaders of opinion to-day are the men — like him 

179 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

who presides in our assembly — whom virtue exalts, 
and character crowns. It rejoices in a Chief Magis- 
trate as upright and intrepid, in a virtuous cause, as 
any of those whom, he succeeds. It is part of a State 
whose present position, in laws, and officers, and the 
spirit of its people, does no discredit to the noblest of 
its memories. And from these heights between the 
rivers, looking over the land, looking out on the earth 
to which its daily embassies go, it sees nowhere be- 
neath the sun a city more ample in its moral securities, 
a city more dear to those who possess it, a city more 
splendid in promise and in hope. 

What 'is true of the city is true, in effect, of all the 
land. Two things, at least, have been established by # 
our national history, the impression of which the 
world will not lose. The one is, that institutions like 
ours, when sustained by a prevalent moral life through- 
out the nation, are naturally permanent. The other is, 
that they tend to peaceful relations with other states. 
They do this in fulfilment of an organic tendency, and 
not through any accident of location. The same tend- 
ency will inhere in them, wheresoever established. 

In this age of the world, and in all the states which 
Christianity quickens, the allowance of free movement 
to the popular mind is essential to the stability of 
public institutions. There may be restraint enough to 
guide, and keep such movement from premature ex- 
hibition. But there cannot be force enough used to 
resist it, and to reverse its gathering current. If 
there is, the government is swiftly overthrown, as in 
France so often, or is left on one side, as Austria has 
been by the advancing German people ; like the castle 
of Heidelberg, at once palace and fortress, high-placed 

180 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

and superb, but only the stateliest ruin in Europe, while 
the rail-train thunders through the tunnel beneath it, 
and the Neckar sings along its near channel as if 
tower and tournament never had been. Revolution, 
transformation, organic change, have thus all the time. 
for this hundred years been proceeding in Europe ; 
sometimes silent, but of tener amid thunders of stricken 
fields; sometimes pacific, but oftener with garments 
rolled in blood. 

In England the progress has been peaceful, the 
popular demands being ratified as law whenever the 
need became apparent. It has been vast, as well as 
peaceful ; in the extension of suffrage, in the ever-in- 
creasing power of the Commons, in popular education. 
Chatham himself would hardly know his own Eng- 
land if he should return to it. , The Throne continues, 
illustrated by the virtues of her who fills it ; and the 
ancient forms still obtain in Parliament. But it could 
not have occurred to him, or to Burke, that a century 
after the ministry of Grenville the embarkation of the 
Pilgrims would be one of the prominent historical 
pictures on the panels of the lobby of the House of 
Lords, or that the name of Oliver Cromwell, and of 
Bradshaw, President of the High Court of Justice, 
would be cut in the stone in Westminster Abbey, over 
the places in which they were buried, and whence 
their decaying bodies were dragged to the gibbet and 
the ditch. England is now, as has been well said, " an 
aristocratic republic, with a permanent executive." 
Its only perils lie in the fact of that aristocracy, 
which, however, is flexible enough to endure, of that 
permanence in the executive, which would hardly out- 
live one vicious prince. 

181 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

What changes have taken place in France, I need 
not remind you, nor how uncertain is still its future. 
You know how the swift untiring wheels of advance 
or reaction have rolled this way and that, in Italy 
and in Spain; how Germany has had to be recon- 
structed ; how Hungary has had to fight and suffer 
for that just place in the Austrian councils which only 
imperial defeat surrendered. You know how preca- 
rious the equilibrium now is, in many states, between 
popular rights and princely prerogative ; what armies 
are maintained, to fortify governments ; what fear of 
sudden and violent change, like an avalanche tum- 
bling at the touch of a foot, perplexes nations. The 
records of change make the history of Europe. The 
expectation of change is almost as wide as the con- 
tinent itself. 

Meantime, how permanent has been this Kepublic, 
which seemed at the outset to foreign spectators a 
mere sudden insurrection, a mere organized riot ! Its 
organic law, adopted after exciting debate, but arous- 
ing no battle and enforced by no army, has been inter- 
preted, and peacefully administered, with one great 
exception, from the beginning. It has once been as- 
sailed, with passion and skill, with splendid daring 
and unbounded self-sacrifice, by those who sought a 
sectional advantage through its destruction. No mon- 
archy of the world could have stood that assault. It 
seemed as if the last fatal apocalypse had come, to 
drench the land with plague and blood, and wrap it in 
a fiery gloom. The Eepublic, 

— pouring, like the tide into a breach, 
With ample and brim fulness of its force, 

182 



THE DECLARATION OE INDEPENDENCE 

subdued the rebellion, emancipated the race which had 
been in subjection, restored the dominion of the old 
constitution, amended its provisions in the contrary 
direction from that which had been so fiercely sought, 
gave it guaranties of endurance while the continent 
lasts, and made its ensigns more eminent than ever in 
the regions from which they had been expelled. The 
very portions of the people which then sought its 
overthrow are now again its applauding adherents — 
the great and constant reconciling force, the tran- 
quillizing Irenarch, being the freedom which it leaves 
in their hands. 

It has kept its place, this Eepublic of ours, in spite 
of the rapid expansion of the nation over territory 
so wide that the scanty strip of the original states is 
only as a fringe on its immense mantle. It has kept 
its place, while vehement debates, involving the pro- 
foundest ethical principles, have stirred to its depths 
the whole public mind. It has kept its place, while 
the tribes of mankind have been pouring upon it, 
seeking the shelter and freedom which it gave. It 
saw an illustrious President murdered by the bullet 
of an assassin. It saw his place occupied as quietly 
by another as if nothing unforeseen or alarming had 
occurred. It saw prodigious armies assembled for 
its defense. It saw those armies, at the end of the 
war, marching in swift and long procession up the 
streets of the Capital,' and then dispersing into their 
former peaceful citizenship, as if they had had no arms 
in their hands. The general before whose skill and 
will those armies had been shot upon the forces which 
opposed them, and whose word had been their mili- 
tary law, remained for three years an appointed offi- 

183 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

cer of the government he had saved. Elected then 
to be the head of that government, and again re- 
elected by the ballots of his countrymen, in a few 
months more he will have retired, to be thenceforth a 
citizen like the rest, eligible to office, and entitled 
to vote, but with no thought of any prerogative de- 
scending to him, or to his children, from his great 
service and military fame. The Republic, whose 
triumphing armies he led, will remember his name, 
and be grateful for his work ; but neither to him, nor 
to any one else, will it ever give sovereignty over 
itself. 

From the Lakes to the Gulf its will is the law, its 
dominion complete. Its centripetal and centrifugal 
forces are balanced, almost as in the astronomy of the 
heavens. Decentralizing authority, it puts his own 
part of it into the hand of every citizen. Giving free 
scope to private enterprise, allowing not only, but ac- 
cepting and encouraging, each movement of the pub- 
lic reason which is its only terrestrial rule, there is no 
threat, in all its sky, of division or downfall. It can- 
not be successfully assailed from within. It never 
will be assailed from without, with a blow at its life, 
while other nations continue sane. 

It has been sometimes compared to a pyramid, 
broad-based and secure, not liable to overthrow as is 
obelisk or column, by storm or age. The comparison 
is just, but it is not sufficient. It should rather be 
compared to one of the permanent features of nature, 
and not to any artificial construction : — to the river, 
which flows, like our own Hudson, along the courses 
that nature opens, forever in motion, but forever the 
same ; to the lake, which lies on common days level 

184 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

and bright in placid stillness, while it gathers its ful- 
ness from many lands, and lifts its waves in stormy 
strength when winds assail it ; to the mountain, 
which is shaped by no formula of art, and which only 
rarely, in some supreme sun-burst, flushes with color, 
but whose roots the very earthquake cannot shake, 
and on whose brow the storms fall hurtless, while 
under its shelter the cottage nestles, and up its sides 
the gardens climb. 

So stands the Kepublic : 

Whole as the marble, founded as the rock, 
As broad and general as the casing air. 

Our government has been permanent, as established 
upon the old Declaration, and steadily sustained by 
the undecaying and moulding life in the soul of the 
nation. It has been peaceful, also, for the most part, 
in scheme and in spirit ; and has shown at no time 
such an appetite for war as has been familiar, within 
the century, in many lands. 

This may be denied, by foreign critics ; or at any 
rate be explained, if the fact be admitted, by our iso- 
lation from other states, by our occupation in peace- 
ful labors, which have left no room for martial enter- 
prise, perhaps by an alleged want in us of that 
chivalric and high-pitched spirit which is gladdened 
by danger and which welcomes the fray. I do not 
think the explanation sufficient, the analysis just. 

This people was trained to military effort, from its 
beginning. It had in it the blood of Saxon and Nor- 
man, neither of whom was afraid of war ; the very 
same blood which a few years after was poured out 
like water at Marston Moor, and JSTaseby, and Dun- 

185 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

bar. Ardor and fortitude were added to its spirit by 
those whose fathers had followed Coligni, by the 
children of those whom Alva and Parma could not 
conquer, or whom Gustavus had inspired with his 
intense and paramount will. With savages in the 
woods, and the gray wolf prowling around its cabins, 
the hand of this people was from the first as familiar 
with the gun-stock as with mattock or plough ; and it 
spent more time, in proportion to its leisure, it spent 
more life, in proportion to its numbers, from 1607 to 
1776, in protecting itself against violent assault than 
was spent by France, the most martial of kingdoms, 
on all the bloody fields of Europe. 

Then came the Revolution, with its years of war, 
and its crowning success, to intensify, and almost to 
consecrate this spirit, and to give it distribution ; 
while, from that time, the nation has been taking into 
its substance abounding elements from all the fighting 
peoples of the earth. The Irishman, who is never so 
entirely himself as when the battle-storm hurtles 
around him ; the Frenchman, who says, " After you, 
gentlemen," before the infernal fire of Fontenoy ; 
the German, whose irresistible tread the world lately 
heard at Sadowa and Sedan, — these have been en- 
tering, representatives of two of them entering by 
millions, into the Republic. If any nation, therefore, 
should have a fierce and martial temper, this is the 
one. If any people should keep its peaceful neigh- 
bors in fear, lest its aggression should smite their 
homes, it is a people born, and trained, and replen- 
ished like this, admitting no rule but its own will, and 
conscious of a strength whose annual increase makes 
arithmetic pant. 

186 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

What has been the fact? Lay out of sight that 
late civil war which could not be averted, when once 
it had been threatened, except by the sacrifice of the 
government itself, and a wholly unparalleled public 
suicide, and how much of war with foreign powers 
has the century seen ? There has been a frequent 
crackle of musketry along the frontiers, as Indian 
tribes, which refused to be civilized, have slowly and 
fiercely retreated toward the West. There was one 
war declared against Tripoli, in 1801, when the Re- 
public took by the throat the African pirates to whom 
Europe paid tribute, and when the gallantry of Preble 
and Decatur gave early distinction to our navy. 
There was a war declared against England, in 1812, 
when our seamen had been taken from under our 
flag, from the decks indeed of our national ships, and 
our commerce had been practically swept from the 
seas. There was a war affirmed already to exist in 
Mexico, in 1846, entered into by surprise, never form- 
ally declared, against which the moral sentiment of 
the nation rose wildly in revolt, but which in its re- 
sult added largely to our territory, opened to us Cali- 
fornian treasures, and wrote the names of Buena Yista 
and Monterey on our short annals. 

That has been our military history ; and if a people, 
as powerful and as proud, has anywhere been more 
peaceable also, in the last hundred years, the strictest 
research fails to find it. Smarting with the injury 
done us by England during the crisis of our national 
peril, in spite of the remonstrances presented through 
that distinguished citizen who should have been your 
orator to-day, — while hostile taunts had incensed our 
people, while burning ships had exasperated com- 

187 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

nierce, and while what looked like artful evasions had 
made statesmen indignant, — with a half-million men 
who had hardly yet laid down their arms, with a navy 
never before so vast, or so fitted for service, — when a 
war with England would have had the force of pas- 
sion behind it, and would at any rate have shown to 
the world that the nation respects its starry flag, and 
means to have it secure on the seas, — we referred all 
differences to arbitration, appointed commissioners, 
tried the cause at Geneva, with advocates, not with 
armies, and got a prompt and ample verdict. If Can- 
ada now lay next to Yorkshire it would not be safer 
from armed incursion than it is when divided by only 
a custom-house from all the strength of this Kepublic. 
The fact is apparent, and the reason not less so. A 
monarchy, just as it is despotic, finds incitement to 
war ; for preoccupation of the popular mind ; to 
gratify nobles, officers, the army ; for historic renown. 
An intelligent Kepublic hates war, and shuns it. It 
counts standing armies a curse only second to an 
annual pestilence. It wants no glory but from 
growth. It delights itself in arts of peace, seeks 
social enjoyment and increase of possessions, and feels 
instinctively that, like Israel of old, " its strength is 
to sit still." It cannot bear to miss the husbandman 
from the fields, the citizen from the town, the house- 
father from the home, the worshiper from the 
church. To change or shape other people's institu- 
tions is no part of its business. To force them to ac- 
cept its scheme of government would simply contra- 
dict and nullify its charter. Except, then, when it is 
startled into passion by the cry of a suffering under 
oppression which stirs its pulses into tumult, or when 

188 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

it is assailed in its own rights, citizens, property, it 
will not go to war ; nor even then, if diplomacy can 
find a remedy for the wrong. " Millions for defense," 
said Cotesworth Pinckney to the French Directory, 
when Talleyrand in their name had threatened him 
with war, " but not a cent for tribute." He might 
have added, " and not a dollar for aggressive strife." 

It will never be safd to insult such a nation, or to 
outrage its citizens ; for the reddest blood is in its 
veins, and some Captain Ingraham may always ap- 
pear, to lay his little sloop of war alongside the 
offending frigate, with shotted guns, and a peremp- 
tory summons. There is a way to make powder in- 
explosive ; but, treat it chemically how you will, the 
dynamite will not stand many blows of the hammer. 
The detonating tendency is too permanent in it. But 
if left to itself, such a people will be peaceful, as ours 
has been. It will foster peace among the nations. It 
will tend to dissolve great permanent armaments, as 
the light conquers ice, and summer sunshine breaks 
the glacier which a hundred trip-hammers could only 
scar. The longer it continues, the more widely and 
effectively its influence spreads, the more will its be- 
nign example hasten the day, so long foretold, so 
surely coming, when 

• The war-drum throbs no longer, and the battle-flags are furled, 
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World. 

Mr. President : fellow citizens : — To an extent too 
great for your patience, but with a rapid incomplete- 
ness that is only too evident as we match it with the 
theme, I have outlined before you some of the reasons 
why we have right to commemorate the day whose 

189 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

hundredth anniversary has brought us together, and 
why the paper then adopted has interest and impor- 
tance not only for us, but for all the advancing sons 
of men. Thank God that he who framed the Decla- 
ration, and he who was its foremost champion, both 
lived to see the nation they had shaped growing to 
greatness, and to die together, in that marvelous co- 
incidence, on its semi-centennial! The fifty years 
which have passed since then have only still further 
honored their work. Mr. Adams was mistaken in the 
day which he named as the one to be most fondly 
remembered. It was not that on which Independence 
of the empire of Great Britain was formally resolved. 
It was that on which the reasons were given which 
justified the act, and the principles were announced 
which made it of secular significance to mankind. 
But he would have been absolutely right in saying of 
the fourth day what he did say of the second : it 
" will be the most remarkable epoch in the history of 
America ; to be celebrated by succeeding generations 
as the great anniversary festival, commemorated as the 
day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to Al- 
mighty God, from one end of the continent to the other." 

It will not be forgotten, in the land or in the earth, 
until the stars have fallen from their poise ; or until 
our vivid morning-star of republican liberty, not los- 
ing its lustre, has seen its special brightness fade in 
the ampler effulgence of a freedom universal ! 

But while we rejoice in that which is past, and 
gladly recognize the vast organific mystery of life 
which was in the Declaration, the plans of Providence 
which slowly and silently, but with ceaseless progres- 
sion, had led the r way to it, the immense and enduring 

190 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

results of good which from it have flowed, let us not 
forget the duty which always equals privilege, and 
that of peoples, as well as of persons, to whomsoever 
much is given, shall only therefore the more be re- 
quired. Let us consecrate ourselves, each one of us, 
here, to the further duties which wait to be fulfilled, 
to the work which shall consummate the great work 
of the fathers ! 

From scanty soils come richest grapes, and on 
severe and rocky slopes the trees are often of toughest 
fiber. The wines of Rudesheim and Johannisberg 
cannot be grown in the fatness of gardens, and the 
cedars of Lebanon disdain the levels of marsh and 
meadow. So a heroism is sometimes native to penury 
which luxury enervates, and the great resolution 
which sprang up in the blast, and blossomed under 
inclement skies, may lose its shapely and steadfast 
strength when the air is all of summer softness. In 
exuberant resources is to be the coming American 
peril ; in a swiftly increasing luxur}'- of life. The old 
humility, hardihood, patience, are too likely to be lost 
when material success again opens, as it will, all 
avenues to wealth, and when its brilliant prizes solicit, 
as again they will, the national spirit. 

Be it ours to endeavor that that temper of the 
fathers, which was nobler than their work, shall live in 
the children, and exalt to its tone their coming career ; 
that political intelligence, patriotic devotion, a rever- 
ent spirit toward Him who is above, an exulting ex- 
pectation of the future of the world, and a sense of our 
relation to it, shall be, as of old, essential forces in our 
public life ; that education and religion keep step all 
the time with the nation's advance, and the School and 

191 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

the Church be always at home wherever its flag shakes 
out its folds. In a spirit worthy the memories of the 
Past let us set ourselves to accomplish the tasks which, 
in the sphere of national politics, still await comple- 
tion. ¥e burn the sunshine of other years, when we 
ignite the wood or coal upon our hearths. We enter a 
privilege which ages have secured, in our daily enjoy- 
ment of political freedom. While the kindling glow 
irradiates our homes, let it shed its luster on our spirit, 
and quicken it for its further work. 

Let us fight against the tendency of educated men 
to reserve themselves from politics, remembering that 
no other form of human activity is so grand or effect- 
ive as that which affects, first the character, and then 
the revelation of character in the government, of a 
great and free people. Let us make religious dissen- 
sion here, as a force in politics, as absurd as witch- 
craft. 1 Let party names be nothing to us, in compari- 
son with that costly and proud inheritance of liberty 
and of law, which parties exist to conserve and en- 
large, which any party will have here to maintain if it 
would not be buried, at the next crossroads, with a 
stake through its breast. Let us seek the unity of all 
sections of the Eepublic, through the prevalence in all 
of mutual respect, through the assurance in all of local 

1 Cromwell is sometimes considered a bigot. His rule on this sub- 
ject is therefore the more worthy of record : "Sir, the State, in choosing 
men to serve it, takes no notice of their opinions ; if they be willing 
faithfully to serve it, that satisfies. . . . Take heed of being sharp, 
or too easily sharpened by others, against those to whom you can ob- 
ject little, but that they square not with you in every opinion concern^ 
ing matters of religion. If there be any other offense to be charged 
upon him, that must, in a judicial way, receive determination." — 
Letter to Major-General Crawford, 10th March, 1643. 

192 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

freedom, through the mastery in all of that supreme 
spirit which flashed from the lips of Patrick Henry, 
when he said, in the first Continental Congress, " I am 
not a Virginian, but an American." Let us take care 
that labor maintains its ancient place of privilege and 
honor, and that industry has no fetters imposed, of 
legal restraint or of social discredit, to hinder its work 
or to lessen its wage. Let us turn, and overturn, in 
public discussion, in political change, till we secure a 
Civil Service, honorable, intelligent, and worthy of the 
land, in which capable integrity, not partisan zeal, 
shall be the condition of each public trust ; and let us 
resolve that whatever it may cost, of labor and of pa- 
tience, of sharper economy and of general sacrifice, it 
shall come to pass that wherever American labor toils, 
wherever American enterprise plans, wherever Amer- 
ican commerce reaches, thither again shall go as of old 
the country's coin — the American Eagle, with the en- 
circling stars and golden plumes ! 

In a word, fellow citizens, the moral life of the na- 
tion being ever renewed, all advancement and timely 
reform will come as comes the bourgeoning of the tree 
from the secret force which fills its veins. Let us each 
of us live, then, in the blessing and the duty of our 
great citizenship, as those who are conscious of un- 
reckoned indebtedness to a heroic and prescient Past : 
— the grand and solemn lineage of whose freedom 
runs back beyond Bunker Hill or the Mayflower, runs 
back beyond muniments and memories of men, and 
has the majesty of far centuries on it ! Let us live as 
those for whom God hid a continent from the world, 
till He could open all its scope to the freedom and faith 
of gathered peoples, from many lands, to be a nation 

M 193 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

to His honor and praise ! Let us live as those to whom 
He commits the magnificent trust of blessing peoples 
many and far, by the truths which He has made our 
life, and by the history which He helps us to accomplish. 

Such relation to a Past ennobles this transient and 
vanishing life. Such a power of influence on the dis- 
tant and the future, is the supremest terrestrial privi- 
lege. It is ours, if we will, in the mystery of that 
spirit which has an immortal and a ubiquitous life. 
With the swifter instruments now in our hands, with 
the land compacted into one immense embracing home, 
with the world opened to the interchange of thought, 
and thrilling with the hopes that now animate its life, 
each American citizen has superb opportunity to make 
his influence felt afar, and felt for long ! 

Let us not be unmindful of this ultimate and inspir- 
ing lesson of the hour ! By all the memories of the 
Past, by all the impulse of the Present, by the noblest 
instincts of our own souls, by the touch of His sover- 
eign Spirit upon us, God make us faithful to the work, 
and to Him ! that so not only this city may abide, in 
long and bright tranquillity of peace, when our eyes 
have shut forever on street, and spire, and populous 
square; that so the land, in all its future, may reflect 
an influence from this anniversary; and that, when 
another century has passed, the sun which then as- 
cends the heavens may look on a world advanced and 
illumined beyond our thought, and here may behold 
the same great nation, born of struggle, baptized into 
liberty, and in its second terrific trial purchased by 
blood, then expanded and multiplied till all the land 
blooms at its touch, and still one in its life, because 
still pacific, Christian, free ! 

194 



IV 

THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPER- 
NATURAL IN LETTERS AND 
IN LIFE 



An Oration delivered at Cambridge, Mass., before the Phi Beta 
Kappa Society in Harvard University, July 1, 1880, and repeated in 
substance in New York, at the request of the Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science and Art, at the meeting of the Association, 
April 11, 1881. 



IV 

THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNAT- 
UKAL IN LETTERS AND IN LIFE 



Me. Peesident : Gentlemen of the Society : 

It is a brilliant and prophetic enthusiasm of our 
times which finds its incentive in the advancing mas- 
tery of man over external nature. To an extent not 
always equaled in political, military, or religious en- 
thusiasms, it justifies itself by what man has positively 
achieved, in his long wrestle with the vast and ener- 
getic physical system in which he is placed. He 
knows more of it : through the widened range of geo- 
graphical exploration, through the broader scope and 
the finer exactness of scientific inquiry, through the 
occasional surprising insight of poetical genius, seizing 
the secret rhythm of its laws, and anticipating the 
more gradual discoveries of research. He uses it, ac- 
cordingly, with clearer intelligence, a more assured 
and fruitful freedom. 

The impulse to govern has certainly had no fairer 
field or nobler exhibition, than it has with the mod- 
ern student of nature. Not content with climbing 
the lucent steeps, by lens and analysis, that he may 
follow the stars in their courses, may measure their 
masses, prefigure their motion, and even detect their 
forming elements, or with making the rocks give up 
their fossils, unroll their records of fire-mist and of 

197 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

glacier, and show how they are arched and wedged to 
maintain the continents — not satisfied to explore the 
physical constitution of the animal tribes, though 
hidden miles deep beneath the sea-surface, to interpret 
the physiology and chemistry of plants, or to search 
for the secret origin of life, and trace its development 
in the manifold marvels of organization — he com- 
mands admiration by making the forces, vital or me- 
chanical, which his search ascertains, contribute to 
assist human progress, in deft, elastic, unwearied serv- 
ice. His successes in this direction give ever-fresh 
surprise to the century : as the vapor which fire smites 
from the water pulls his trains, or pushes his vast iron- 
framed hulls over the sea ; as the magical wire trans- 
mits his thought, without interval of time, to distant 
lands; as sunbeams paint instantaneous pictures, of 
faces, palaces, landscapes, clouds, while hurtless light- 
nings begin already to illuminate his towns ; as vege- 
tables and minerals, whose virtues lately were unsus- 
pected, yield medicines for his sickness, tonics for his 
weakness, balms for his pain. 

Man seems approaching, with no dilatory steps, the 
point where he shall have supremacy, by reason of his 
knowledge, and of the instruments with which skill 
supplies him, over the forces hitherto hidden in the 
great complex of what we call Nature ; when his alert 
and indefatigable will, not aspiring to arrest or rad- 
ically change the vast and subtle cosmical energies, 
shall be able to use them with easy and secure control. 
Already, in part — hereafter, it seems probable, with a 
completeness only indicated now — he is to have at his 
command, under the beneficent primitive laws which 
no ingenuity can amend or avoid, the physical powers 

198 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

that play like thought, yet work with an energy dem- 
iurgic, in the structure of the globe. Then the 
planet shall be subjected to him, whose direct muscu- 
lar hold upon its mass is so insignificant : presenting 
its forces for his employment, its wealths for his pos- 
session, its secrets of beauty for his gladness and cul- 
ture, while it also bears him in silent smoothness amid 
the vast aerial spaces. 

It is natural that the advance thus realized, and the 
further advance which seems predicted, should be re- 
garded with an animating pride, and that their effects 
upon civilization should be anticipated with fond ex- 
pectation. 

Already those effects have been manifold and im- 
portant. Not only have we better houses in conse- 
quence, softer clothing, more elaborate furniture and 
more various foods, quicker passage from point to 
point, larger opportunities for making leisure agree- 
able and labor productive, — this ampler mastery of 
man over nature tends to the increase of general in- 
telligence, to the liberalizing of governments, and the 
wider establishment of popular freedoms. While it 
gives incessant motive to invention, it encourages as 
well the far ventures of commerce. While it keeps 
the chemist busy in his laboratory, the mineralogist 
with his hammer, or the civil engineer with his exact 
and immense calculations, it expands the range and 
augments the equipment of institutions of learning. 
It tends as well to brace and exhilarate the spirit of 
peoples, making each person whose life is embraced in 
their composite unity more conscious of the common 
sovereignty over whatever furthers enterprise. It 
brings nations into neighborhood, and gives growing 

199 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

intimacy to their moral and jural relations with each 
other ; thus tending at last to realize the ideal of a 
Race compacted of many peoples, each with its idioms 
of law, custom, art, language, but all united in com- 
mon endeavors and a common aspiration. 

The progress thus in part achieved, and which looks 
for completion, is one in which all must rejoice who 
recognize the relation between an improved outward 
civilization and a wider and more practical popular 
training ; who see how arts, industries, freedoms, in- 
spire and sustain the public tone of hopefulness and 
of courage. Perhaps nothing else in the brilliant 
history of human endeavor illustrates better the dig- 
nity and the undaunted boldness of the spirit in man, 
than does the fact that he can so explore and domi- 
nate the serviceable system, of physical forces amid 
which he stands. It was the signal of unrivaled em- 
pire, in the day of Kome's power, when tribute came 
to the conquering city from peoples of whom the gen- 
eration just passed had not even heard. It sets a 
superb crdwn upon man that so many sciences and 
practical arts, unknown to our childhood, now bring 
to him ensigns and troops, spices and gold. 

But while this is true, it is true also that one effect 
follows, though not perhaps in necessary consequence, 
from this progressive control of man over natural 
forces, whose promises are not of the best. It is seen 
in the feebler impression which he takes of anything 
grand, powerful, even real, above and beyond this 
apparent and sensible frame of things ; in the doubt 
which comes by degrees to possess him whether there 
be any over-world, invisible but transcendent, with 
which he stands in essential relations. Certainly the 

200 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

apprehension of such surpassing realms of being, in- 
accessible to man's search, though not eluding the 
reach of his thought, has been more vivid in other 
times than it is at present, among other peoples than 
it is among us. The mass, and the multiform attrac- 
tion, of the physical, now pull the thought from ethe- 
real heights. Men are too busy with the proximate 
provinces of construction and energy to think of any 
outlying realms which railways cannot reach, and 
with which telegraphs do not communicate. Present 
phenomena sensibly concern them. Measurable forces 
directly subserve their convenience or their enterprise. 
The practical and controlling regard of society thus 
fastens upon these. The " positive philosophy " only 
formulates and elaborates a diffused thought, out of 
which it has sprung ; and they are in danger of being 
regarded as fanciful enthusiasts who seriously affirm 
that the immaterial is more permanent than matter, 
the spiritual more stupendous than all which the visi- 
ble heavens exhibit : that there are, or may be, illim- 
itable spheres of personal power, and of a supreme 
vital experience, whose light has as yet but dimly 
dawned on the most aspiring soul of man, but with 
which each, by the make of his spirit, is essentially 
allied, and in comparison with which the furthest ex- 
pansion, the most commanding or fruitful energy, of 
that which is natural becomes insignificant. 

There have been times when the existence of such 
manifold and imperative systems of life, above the 
present, was an axiom in thought. Undoubtedly 
there are those who hold it now, with as clear a con- 
ception, with a confidence as profound. But the pop- 
ular literature takes slight account of it, while the 

201 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

general mind, in civilized lands, is only more firmly 
anchored to the earth by every drill which cuts the 
rock, by every spade which uncovers the mine, by 
every fresh terrestrial force which is engaged for 
human use. It tends to hold in abeyance, if not to 
deny, the tremendous proposition of the existence and 
presence of a governing God. It somewhat doubts if 
consciousness be not a mere function of the brain, and 
if there be any personal career awaiting the spirit be- 
yond the grave. And it wholly ignores, if it does not 
even scornfully reject, the existence of multitudinous 
persons and powers — like the Thrones, Dominations, 
Princedoms of Milton — beyond the reach of its the- 
orems or tubes. 

We cannot fail, I am sure, to recognize the tend- 
ency, whether it has our sympathy or not ; or to see 
that it advances with civilization, and is there most 
energetic and governing where the special knowledges 
marking our time have fullest development. And as 
civilized lands affect others with more and more 
power — making the impression not of their arts or 
wealths alone, but of their prevalent moral life — this 
tendency widens in the world. It seems to bid fair to 
become universal. Then those supersensible spheres 
of being from which, or from the impression of which, 
has come large influence upon man, will cease to at- 
tract his forecasting thought. The solid globe, on 
which cities are builded and governments framed, over 
which are flung the myriad lines of railway and wire, 
and the smallest crinkle along whose coasts has been 
measured and mapped, this will be to the race which 
dwells on it the ultimate object of inquiry and regard. 
The advancing control over physical energies will 

802 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

satisfy aspiration ; and the strange supernal grace 
and gleam which have at times indisputably shot 
from realms beyond all reach of sense, upon the spirit 
and life of the world, will fail to affect the coming times. 

In some of . its obvious and familiar relations it is 
not my office to combat this tendency, or to offer 
critical comments upon it. But it stands connected 
with large departments of thought and experience, 
in which we all must feel an interest ; and I cannot 
but think that it threatens a loss, in certain directions, 
which we shall all desire to avoid. It may be that 
we, as scholarly persons, have duties to perform which 
are relative to it, and whose authority we shall concede. 

It is evident at once that the failure to recognize 
any sovereign reality in spheres and systems of spirit- 
ual energy, transcending the nature which science in- 
vestigates, has essential bearing upon religious thought 
and life ; that it sharply antagonizes that scheme of 
Christianity which has for centuries been in the world, 
whose influence has been admitted by most to be 
largely beneficent, and which many of us have been 
wont to regard as the underlying force beneath what 
is best in civilization. Whether or not miracles are 
held to be essentially associated with the substance of 
Christianity, it will scarcely be denied that this claims 
to come from a Being supreme, through those whom 
He had instructed and quickened, and that its prom- 
ises contemplate a life on higher levels, in nobler asso- 
ciations, than we yet know. If, then, there be no 
realms above us, with which we are connected, the 
so-called Evangel becomes a Galilaean fancy ; and the 
faith in which many have found hitherto their utmost 
wisdom and inexhaustible solace has disappeared, like 

203 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

the cloud of chrysolite and opal dissolved into mist. 
But in this relation it is not iny purpose now to con- 
sider this tendency of the time, since the theme might 
not wholly suit the occasion. It has relations, how- 
ever, almost as plainly, to the soul of man, in its in- 
trinsic force and sensibility, and to some chief forms 
in which that soul expresses its life : to art, letters, 
government, history, to social science, philanthropic 
endeavor, as well as to religion ; and in these connec- 
tions it is clearly our province to seek to anticipate 
and to measure its effects. 

I cannot but feel that it threatens a loss to much 
which is 'of value in civilization; that the recognition 
of spheres of being above our sense — the positive and 
practical recognition of such, in the minds from which 
others take uplift and impulse — is quite indispensable 
to whatever is noblest in thought and life ; and that 
when this passes, if it shall pass, from the general con- 
sciousness, an immense force will be deducted from 
the powers which have wrought for man's advance- 
ment. It may be therefore part of our business, not 
to suppress, but certainly to supplement, the now active 
tendency of thought, by bringing nearer to the aver- 
age mind the things superior, which pass the limits of 
what we call Nature. I would offer, with your per- 
mission, a brief plea for the fresh and controlling rec- 
ognition among us of what is essentially supernatural : 
which cannot be the object of present demonstration, 
yet whose reality is suggested by many facts, and the 
glory of which man may in a measure prophetically 
feel, though only its vague outlines can he see. I 
would do this, not so much in the interest of religion, as 
of letters, philosophy, the fair humanities, the political 

204 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

and social elevation of man. Unless I am wholly mis- 
taken in my judgment, there is a duty here for us. 

It is at once to be observed how native to the mind 
appears to be the imbedded impression of something 
transcending the reach of Nature, as we understand 
that ; of realms of existence, surpassing sight, yet of 
substantive verity, and to whose abounding intenser 
life the highest which we know on the earth is partial 
and rude. So evident is this, that we are prepared to 
expect beforehand the part which this impression must 
have played in thought and history ; how much must 
have been distinctly derived from it in the spirit and 
the work of illustrious persons or of eminent peoples. 
And we ought clearly to recognize this, even if we are 
henceforth to feel that nothing is real but the rich lit- 
tle planet on which we dwell, with the groups of stars 
to which it is bound. 

Max Miiller seems to state the fact with only tem- 
perate force in his " Science of Keligion," when he 
says : " There will be and can be no rest till we admit, 
what cannot be denied, that there is in man a third 
faculty " — apart, that is, from the faculty of sense, or 
of reason — " which I call simply," he adds, " the fac- 
ulty of apprehending the Infinite, not only in religion, 
but in all things ; a power independent of sense and 
reason, a power in a certain sense contradicted by 
sense and reason ; but yet, I suppose, a very real 
power, if we see how it has held its own from the be- 
ginning of the world — how neither sense nor reason 
have been able to overcome it, while it alone is able to 
overcome both reason and sense." 1 Or, as Mr. Lecky 
has expressed the thought in his History of European 

1 Lectures on the Science of Keligion, page 14. 
205 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

Morals: "Mysticism, transcendentalism, inspiration 
and grace, are all words expressing the deep-seated 
belief that we possess fountains of knowledge apart 
from all the acquisitions of the senses ; that there are 
certain states of mind, certain flashes of moral and in- 
tellectual illumination, which cannot be accounted for 
by any play or combination of our ordinary faculties." 1 
He finds in harmony with this the Neo-Platonist prin- 
ciple, that, in divine things, the task of man is not to 
create or to acquire, but to educe ; that the means of 
his perfection are not dialectics or research, but medi- 
tation and silence, with whatever may overawe and 
elevate the mind, and quicken the realization of the 
Divine Presence. 

Such a deep and quick sense of the realness and su- 
premacy of things above the visible forms and physical 
forces with which we are invested — such an apprehen- 
sion of reciprocal relations between the life which we 
have on earth and the transcending life on high, and 
of the possibility of the mind's attaining strange con- 
sciousness of that in its occasional superlative states — 
this seems to be as instinctive with man, I had almost 
said, as the sense of personality. It is not the late 
fruit of an over-stimulated civilization. On the other 
hand, it lies nearest man's primitive experience, and 
marks most distinctly his earlier development. Con- 
cerning this, at least, it is true that " trailing clouds 
of glory " doth he come. All ethnic religions involve 
this fundamental idea, the rudest as well as the most 
elaborate ; and the fetish of the barbarian, the fantas- 
tic idol of the Indian temple — with its eyes of glitter- 
ing stones, and its grotesque combinations of abnormal 

1 Vol. I, page 348. 
206 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

images of fierceness and strength — these, as well as 
stately temples, Egyptian or Hellenic, illustrate the 
activity, and the general distribution, of that instinct 
in man which affirms the primacy over all that is visi- 
ble of what eye hath not seen, nor the human spirit 
wholly conceived. 

The religions of the world have not been suggested, 
however they have been used, by craft and ambition. 
They have sprung from instinctive aspirations in the 
soul, reaching toward persons and realms supernatural, 
as surely as geysers, flinging their strange and steam- 
ing columns through icy airs, have taken their impulse 
from profound and energetic subterranean forces. If 
anything, therefore, seems native to man, it is this 
tendency to affirm the invisible, and to reach in desire 
toward systems of being surpassing ours. As the frame 
of the bird prepares it for flight, and foreshows that 
as its function and joy — as the automatic impulse of 
the fish propels it as by a physical force through the 
paths of the seas — so the intimate and continuing con- 
stitution of the soul appears to ordain man to accept 
and reach after what passes the limits of sense and 
time. If the instinct, so general, is not a real one, or 
if there is nothing in the facts of the universe which 
furnishes foundation and argument for it, it is hard to 
infer anything with confidence from such a deceptive 
mental constitution. 

It is obvious, too, that what even barbarism thus 
suggests, a careful and searching psychological analy- 
sis affirmatively repeats. The philosophy of the mind 
is certainly not an attenuated counterpart of the phys- 
iology of organization. The moment we recognize 
human personality, we front a marvel which sets man 

207 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

apart, in essential distinction, from the physical system 
in which he is enveloped ; which makes the spirit more 
than balance any masses or mechanics of matter; 
which locates its imperial origin in the purple cham- 
bers of a divine purpose ; and which almost predicts 
for it a destiny august, as it certainly allies it with 
whatever powers or spheres may be ultimate. 

So, in all its higher activity, the spirit affirms its in- 
dependence of occasions, its intimate relations with 
what is sovereign and primordial. It is not only that 
in ecstasy or in agony it transcends situations, finds 
no complete image of its intense life in anything 
physical, and in its bright or awful solitude is con- 
scious only of timeless relations, and of being affined 
to imperial spirits ; there are spontaneous intuitions 
of reason, there are imperative moral affirmations, 
which cannot be confused with careful conclusions of 
the practical understanding, which discern the reality 
of things unseen, and declare them immutable. We 
have to affirm the authority of that intellectual vision 
which seizes the absolute, the unconditioned — we have 
to admit that the moral nature, with its supreme 
sense of a moral order radiant and regnant without 
limit of time, is somehow related to a system above — 
even though we do not concede to the mystic that 
there are transient unspeakable states in which the 
spirit communes directly with unchangeable essences, 
and is in fellowship with minds and a life above the 
earth. Philosophy must say, as well as religion, that 
the highest light comes from above. Only the uni- 
versal interprets the individual. Each balanced dew- 
drop implies the suns. Each simplest fact has its basis 
in a principle valid for all the constellations ; and each 

208 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

human mind must rest on a mind sympathetic, crea- 
tive, and eternally young. Pantheism itself, which 
destructively absorbs the mind into God, yet attrib- 
utes to it this transcendent origin. And, on the other 
hand, how vehemently soever the soul may assert its 
separate sovereignty, when reason and conscience are 
purely illumined they carry in themselves a spiritual 
certitude of something in the universe immutable and 
unspeakable, yet related to us — a certitude as majestic 
as any moving column of cloud, though its fleecy folds 
should be inlaid with heavenly fire. 1 

It is not, therefore, needful to make mysticism our 
Gospel to affirm the organic relation of the soul, by 
its deep and delicate and unsearchable constitution, 
with infinite realms of law and life. The energies 
and the splendors combined in such may well surpass 
our utmost thought, while the realness of their exist- 
ence may be as apparent to the sensitive spirit, on its 
supreme heights, as is the hardness or the color of 
objects of sense. 

Indeed, I do not see why any philosophy should 
deny this, even the most aggressively agnostic. It 

1 "This Universal, which is the idea, he [Plato] conceives as sepa- 
rate from the world of phenomena, as absolutely existing Substance. 
It is the heavenly sphere, in which alone lies the field of truth, in 
which the gods and pure souls behold colorless, shapeless, incorporeal 
Existence ; the justice, temperance, and science that are exalted above 
all Becoming, and exist not in another, but in their own pure essence. 
The true Beauty is in no living creature in earth or heaven or any- 
where else, but remains in its purity everlastingly, for itself and by 
itself, in one form, unmoved by the changes of that which participates 
in it. The Essence of things exists absolutely for itself, one in kind, 
and subject to no vicissitude." — Zeller: " Plato und die alter e Aka- 
demie ; " Trans, of S. F. Alleyne and A. Goodwin, pages 240-1. 
N 209 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

may hold it in abeyance, but why should it deny ? 
Though one should believe that in primal atoms in- 
here " the promise and potency " of mind — that there 
has been, even, spontaneous evolution of nothing into 
force, that the only efficient causes are mechanical, 
and that living things are directly derived, by natural 
means, without break of continuity, from lifeless mat- 
ter — he must admit that somehow or other it has come 
to pass that a cosmos is here : which is not a conge- 
ries of unassociated facts ; in which is constant prog- 
ress upward, from the oldest Laurentian protozoon 
to the brain of a Humboldt or a Goethe ; in which 
the eye of the gnat, and the shimmering outstretch of 
the ocean, equally indicate methodical force ; and to 
which, so far as we can discern, no limit is assignable, 
in space or in time. Why, then, is it not probable, 
even thus, that outside what we know of existence — 
beyond the earth, which we measure by tons, and 
whose pathway in space we reckon by leagues — may 
be outlying grander systems, in which forces have 
come to a finer consummation, yet with which our 
system stands in relation ? 

It can be only a hypothesis, perhaps, on such basis 
of reasoning. I see not why it should not be such, 
and one with a practical effect on the mind. The 
supernatural of the savage is brought within the har- 
monies of law, as science advances. What seems to us 
to wholly surpass or contrast nature, as we know that, 
may be moving in like manner to yet higher melodies 
of plan and rule, if the universe be as extended and 
various as it appears. Our ignorance, certainly, af- 
fords no warrant for a contrary judgment ; and no 
man who has not traversed the immensities can fairly 

210 



THE RECOGNITION OE THE SUPERNATURAL 

deny those majestic and manifold realms of life toward 
which the spirit, in the restlessness of an expectant 
prevision, natively aspires. 

In fact, it is the conception of these which makes 
the harmonious orbs of the heavens, as every night 
declares them to us, alluring to thought. The physi- 
cal combinations of the heavens are stupendous. But 
what really matters it, to the contemplating mind, 
whether there be one world, or twenty, or twenty 
millions, if in their relation to life they are the mere 
equivalents of ours ? or if they are so dissevered from 
us that we can look for no association with what in 
their life is more subtle and regal ? We aim to rise, 
always from the lower to the higher ; from science to 
art ; from history to philosophy ; from the study of 
books to sympathetic conference with masterful 
minds ; from culture to character, and a nobler expe- 
rience. The soul craves, and in prophetic moments it 
expects, in like manner to rise from lower levels, now 
familiar, to further and grander ranges of activity, and 
to contact with nobler forms of life. It wants the 
final " vision divine," for which faculty has been given 
it; and immortality would lose its attraction if the 
courageous and eager spirit were there forever 
to be treading the round of preceding discoveries, 
and making acquisitions only counterparts of its 
present. 

Ascension toward the unreached — an ultimate com- 
panionship with what at present transcends observa- 
tion, and overtops thought — is man's instinctive im- 
pulse and hope. Whatever denies that, or lures or 
drives from it the thought of the world, will lower the 
heights of human aspiration, and throw discredit on a 

211 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

spiritual instinct than which none nobler has been 
shown. 

It will do more than this, as I have suggested. For 
this impulse which reaches toward realms of life above 
the present has not been a feeble or transient force, 
only sufficient to stir vague desire, or to animate 
fancy. It has been one of the most energetic of all 
the forces affecting our mysterious life ; and the large 
incitement of which it has been the vital and peren- 
nial source is conspicuous in history. 

If it has not disciplined the practical understand- 
ing, as have studies in science, or metaphysical analy- 
sis, it has certainly given such scope and stimulation 
as nothing else could to the royal force of the Imagi- 
nation — that faculty which seems most nearly akin to 
higher forms and powers of existence, and from which 
falls transfiguring luster on all subordinate mental 
activity. Whatever exalts and invigorates this, and 
opens to it appropriate range, has to do with the 
noblest intellectual development ; and it is always the 
unattained, believed to exist, yet inaccessible to pre- 
sent research, which most allures and animates this. 
What lies beyond the snowy or verdurous circle of 
the hills, within which one's narrow life is passed 
— what lay beyond the mysterious seas, with their 
monotone of murmured monition or complaint,, be- 
fore the daring keels of commerce had challenged and 
crossed them — what lies amid or above the stars, now 
that man has measured and weighed the earth, and 
hung it in its lowly place amid the constellations — 
that it is, surpassing discovery, eluding equally re- 
agent and spectroscope, of which no ephemeris can be 
computed, which stirs this commanding faculty in the 

212 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

mind. It is not satisfied with recalling the past, or 
invoking the dim and distant figures which tower on 
future earthly fields. It seeks to seize the shapes of 
power, the intensities of experience, yet unapproached, 
and to people with them ethereal realms. If such an 
outreach be denied, its finest and highest incitement 
fails, and discouragement and debility must take the 
place of exuberant impulse in this loveliest and lord- 
liest faculty of the mind. 

Indeed, all the intellectual powers must share, in 
their measure, in such depression, or such stimulation. 
For the mind is not a bundle of faculties, loosely asso- 
ciated, but a vital and energetic unity, wherein each 
force has its completeness in the sympathy of others, 
and shares in their augmented power. The sense of 
native nobleness in the soul is essential to the perfect 
energy of each faculty ; and that sense of nobleness is 
inevitably exalted by the conception of relations to 
what transcends the definite and imperious system 
of nature. Whatever carries us far from ourselves 
tends to broaden and exalt intellectual power. The 
mind which surveys, with a true apprehension, great 
periods in history, is invigorated and widened, as well 
as instructed, by that splendid exercise. Its very con- 
sciousness seems to expand, its intimate energy to 
be reinforced, as it matches itself, in sympathetic re- 
flection, with noble persons and surpassing careers. 
So the student contemplating with interpreting in- 
sight remote problems of philosophy, is more aware 
of the fineness and greatness of his power, for every 
sure and victorious hold which is realized by him on 
the principles there involved ; and it is a majestic 
office of science — ranging in its view from the in- 

213 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

finitely little to the indefinitely great, and infolding 
the creation in its reconciling thought — to stimulate 
and enhance intellectual faculty, by making it master, 
in thought at least, over force and law, as well as 
phenomena. 

But most of all do we become sensible of the royal 
place which belongs to the spirit, most sure and effi- 
cient becomes the impulse thus imparted to the mind, 
when we rise in thought to what in essence surpasses 
the utmost elevation and range of physical nature, yet 
with which we are in vital alliance. The cottage or 
the college overarched by the vast and shining star- 
domes, may sink to nothing in the comparison, as be- 
ing in fact less when so measured than the speck of 
dust floating amid uncalculated azures. But the spirit, 
if there be one, in cottage or in college, which can 
pass beyond the luminous worlds or the unresolved 
nebulae, and feel itself akin to whatever personal 
powers are on them, and to whatever tragedy or 
triumph they witness, that will be only sublimed by 
the action. In such a supreme apocalypse of thought 
it will find inspirations which were else inconceivable. 

The long, mechanic pacings to and fro, 
The set gray life, and apathetic end, 

will not be for it. Intensity of life will then be real- 
ized, in which each force is at its best : as marvels of 
discourse sometimes amaze us, poetic images flash 
upon us, from minds before on the common level, 
when they are passing — as they feel at least — through 
the shadows of death into the expanses of unimagi- 
nable light. The humblest mind, thus related in its 

214 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

consciousness to unattained splendors of life, becomes 
august in the sublimity of its thought. 

An influence so surpassing, as it enters into life, af- 
fects of necessity every faculty. The constructive 
understanding takes alertness and enterprise, and is 
set upon larger and more fruitful activity. The fancy 
works with gladder grace. Even humor is gayer, and 
wit becomes more tenderly bright. The reason rises 
to clearer vision, and is enthroned in serener com- 
mand. That consummate point in experience is 
reached where the child-nature inseparably infuses 
matured power, in which appears the element of gen- 
ius. The consciousness of proximity to a life in the 
universe vaster than ours, whose circles involve but 
sweep beyond us, melodious, ethereal, and without 
limitation — whoever has this, has in him the boy still 
father of the man. He, 

— by the vision splendid, 
Is on his way attended ; 

and the light in which the earth is appareled fades 
not for him into the common light of day. In ex- 
hilarating freedom he walks thenceforth upon the 
high places. Expectation and success are the heritage 
of his mind. The scholar investigates with more dis- 
cursive and rewarding inquisition. The inventor's 
thought plays more freely amid the occult combina- 
tions of force. Jurist and journalist, chemist and 
geologist, artist and explorer, each must respond to 
the stimulating power from that apprehended over- 
world ; while, in the spirits most sensitive and pro- 
found, ineffable forces are brought into action. Then 

215 

t 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

come to such majestic silences ; the sabbaths of con- 
templation ; the visioned hours of the spirit on its 
Patmos ; when it no more is fretted with monotonous 
trifles, or wasted of its superlative life in the ceaseless 
tumult of visible things ; when it sees itself connected 
with immensities and eternities, and is inwardly con- 
scious of immortal vitality. Out of such moods comes 
what is noblest in thought ; and the secret force which 
lifts men to them drops always from higher spheres, 
only seen as yet in far foregleam. When these cease 
to be recognized by man, the mind will miss the 
grandest force which yet has reached it. 1 

Nor may we omit to notice, also, the inspiration 
which comes from the same high source to whatever 
is stateliest, loveliest, sovereign, in the domain of 
character. 

I do not refer, of course, to any special graces or forces 
ascribed to special forms of religion, but to the gen- 
eral moral effect of the clear recognition of spheres 
supernal upon the personal spirit in man. Tranquillity 
is born of it. So are gentleness, gravity, and a grand 
aspiration. It is the condition of those august hopes 

1 "Thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself, and none 
of these things trouble her — neither sounds, nor sights, nor pain, nor 
any pleasure ; when she has as little as possible to do with the body, 
and has no bodily sense or feeling, but is aspiring after being. . . . 
In this present life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach to 
knowledge when we have the least possible concern or interest in the 
body, and are not saturated with the bodily nature, but remain pure 
until the hour when God is pleased to release us. Then the foolish- 
ness of the body will be cleared away, and we shall be pure, and 
hold converse with other pure souls, and know of ourselves the clear 
light everywhere ; and this is surely the light of truth." — Socrates, in 
the Phaedo, 65, 66. 

216 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

which are essentially helpful to virtue. Chivalric dis- 
regard of danger and pain is as natural to it as the lift 
of the waves when the moon hangs above them. Out 
of it has streamed an invincible courage into the will, 
in the time of imminent earthly peril. From it have 
sprung the irresistible enthusiasms, which have 
matched and mastered the ferocities of power. It has 
been the stimulant to heroic consecration, which no 
resistance could daunt or break, any more than grape- 
shot can shatter the sunshine. 

Martyrdom certainly affords no proof of any doc- 
trine, only of the martyr's confidence in it. Mission- 
ary or monastic devotion may illustrate nothing be- 
yond the height to which the human will can rise in 
its disdain of ordinary motives. But mission and mar- 
tyrdom are at least grand facts in exhibition of char- 
acter ; and no one can question that they are most 
familiar where the sense of vital powers and realms 
above the present is vivid and practical. Let Nature, 
as we see it, become to a man all that there is, pinning 
thought to the earth, and narrowing experience within 
sharp time-limits, and the will may still be stubbornly 
set to accomplish a purpose ; but the joy in labor un- 
requited, the victory in lonely suffering, the eager self- 
sacrifice for the unseen — these will pass, with the ardor 
of a devotion no longer legitimate, and the splendor 
and solace of a lost expectation. 

All really superb and delightful character must find, 
as it has found, motive and help in such apprehension 
of things transcendent. Coulanges has shown how 
rooted in the antique state was the thought of the 
Family, as vitally related to spheres beyond, with wor- 
ship due from it to the spirits of those from whom its 

217 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

transmitted life had come. This was, in fact, the con- 
servative force in the ancient society. So the Family 
among us has sacredness upon it, because standing in 
immortal relations, having its basis in a divine plan, 
and making its sweet domestic loves the microcosm of 
all charity and worship. The Church, too, exists — 
according to its ideal, at least — with its vital fellow- 
ships in sacrament and service, to cherish whatever is 
chiefest in character, because of its fundamental 
premise of a life waiting beyond the present ; and no 
society for grand and illustrious ethical culture can 
permanently continue on a slighter foundation. 

The general estimate of spiritual values must be 
highest, the ideal of them most complete, where the 
universe appears an open field for human experience, 
beginning now, to continue through unreckoned cycles. 
If there be other beings than man, and sublimer do- 
mains of life than those which we see, it may well be 
that all the powers which we possess shall seem insig- 
nificant when brought to comparison with those be- 
yond; that our small knowledges shall there disap- 
pear, as tinted clouds, absorbed amid surpassing lights. 
But whatever of pure and high character is in us must 
still be worthy of affection and homage. The morally 
great is equally great on whatever parallel, or if on 
planes above them all. Spaces are nothing, circum- 
stances nothing, to the loving, intrepid, magnanimous 
spirit. "Wherever in the universe are light and beauty, 
duty and grace, there must be the home of the soul 
which with them is in final accord. 

Here, therefore, is the inexhaustible impulse to an 
intrinsic and beautiful nobleness. It is not from laws, 
teachings, examples, the maxims of prudence, or the 

218 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

dictates of conscience — it is from, this immense con- 
ception of the timeless relations of the spirit in man, 
and of its possible coming association with persons 
and spheres surpassing thought, that the subtlest and 
strongest incentive comes to what is august and sur- 
passing in virtue. If one had. the chance to write a 
poem for spirits to read in higher realms — to mould 
the marble into lovely forms of ecstasy and passion 
for them to contemplate — to paint the picture whose 
beauty should show no pallid tint or tremulous line 
beneath the searching heavenly lusters — with what in- 
finite pains would he strive at his work ! That he can 
make his character worthy the free acceptance of 
those whose feet, sandaled with light, have trodden 
only ethereal paths, is the grandest benefit of grace 
which God, if there be a God, has bestowed. It is as- 
suredly the consummate expression of the power of 
protoplasm, if that it be which has built the creation ! 
And when the thought of such a result rises within 
one, the supreme law of character which dominates 
the world from Galilee and from Calvary needs no 
word to interpret, and no argument to defend it. 

This has been shown, in examples uncounted. Be- 
cause an Infinite Life has been recognized, supreme in 
character as in power — with illustrious spirits, wise, 
effulgent, and immortal in beauty — men have sought 
with an ardor beyond that of scholar, soldier, miner, 
for the whiteness of purity, and the moral glory of 
self-consecration. That virtues have appeared among 
those to whom all this was a dream, is of course also 
true. But the contrast offered by their examples, 
always pathetic, is often tragic. Their very ideal has 
wanted firm outline, and luminous supremacy over the 

219 



DILATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

soul. Celestial attractions have imparted no uplift to 
the hard-set and strenuous will. Without ardor of 
spirit, or the glad exhilaration of anticipating minds, 
they have toiled to satisfy moral judgment. There is 
little to animate, though much to admonish, in their 
impatient and sad endeavors ; and nothing is more sure 
than that if the conception be displaced from the gen- 
eral mind of lucid and unwasting spheres with which 
our life is interlinked, the most vigorous incentive to a 
superlative virtue will fail from society, as the waters 
recede from bay or bar when the swing of the sea is 
no longer behind them. 

Because such profound instincts in the soul, and 
such energetic forces, are addressed by the impression 
of what vastly outreaches the tangible and temporal 
system around us, it cannot surprise us that great in- 
fluence should have come from it into civilization : so 
that to remove what it has imparted to human 
achievement would be to impoverish the record of 
the race. ~Not only have schemes of Religion been 
born of it — many of which have been, no doubt, of 
limited value, if not of positive spiritual detriment, to 
human society — but into nearly everything illustrious 
in work the same invisible force has entered, and from 
it that work has taken distinctive quality and worth. 

"What would the history of philosophy be, except 
for the light and the loftiness which are in it by rea- 
son of such an intuitive apprehension of the soul's re- 
lation to vital systems grander than the present, and 
to One above all, who is only disclosed to the love 
which adores Him, while He writes the unfading 
records of His rule in the rush of orbs and the flash 
of star fires ? Under the plane-trees of the Academy 

220 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

— beneath the shadow of that Parthenon which as- 
suredly no accident had builded — Plato portra}^ed the 
world of phenomena as having origin and subsistence 
in and by a supernal series of divine thoughts ; 1 and 
from his day onward, in the field of philosophy, the 
idealists have been masters. No mechanical phi- 
losophy has had secular supremacy ; and that form of 
speculation which reduces the personal spirit in man 
to physical terms, making thought itself, volition, 
passion, the result of simple molecular action, and 
binding the race in a sterner fatalism than any theolo- 
gian ever imagined — it has spurted into sight in dif- 
ferent communities, but it nowhere has reached abid- 
ing power. With whatever boldness it now may as- 
sert the practical equivalence of physics and psychol- 
ogy, the identity of the mind with the encephalic 
brain-mass, it cannot command human consent. The 
spiritual consciousness refuses its authority. It knows 
that not out of such a philosophy has come, or can 
come, true impulse to fine spiritual endeavor, or any 
satisfaction to the soul's aspirations. Invisible in- 

1 "Every one will see that he [the Artificer of the world] must 
have looked to the eternal, for the world is the fairest of creations and 
he is the best of causes. And since it is of such a nature, the world 
has been framed by him with his eye fixed upon that which is appre- 
hended by reason and mind, and is unchangeable, and if this be ad- 
mitted, it must of necessity be a copy of something." 

" Until the creation of time, all things had been made in the like- 
ness of that which was their pattern ; but in so far as the universe did 
not include within itself all animals, in this respect there was still a 
want of harmony. This defect the Creator supplied by fashioning 
them after the nature of the pattern ; and as the mind perceives ideas 
or species of a certain nature and number in the ideal animal, he 
thought that this created world ought to have them of a like nature 
and number." — Timteus, 29, 39. 

221 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

stincts, as real and ready as impalpable atmospheres, 
pull it to the ground, an extinguished meteor, smok- 
ing and sterile. 

But that account of the soul in man which recog- 
nizes in it elements and relations that connect it in- 
dissolubly with unseen and paramount spiritual pow- 
ers, and which expects for it a more vivid life, in 
spheres beyond our present experience — centuries and 
countries become memorable by this ! Its teachers 
and champions have been the really illuminating 
minds, from whom letters and liberties, laws and arts, 
have taken inspiration. They have flung upon the 
earth a light so supreme that even they who were 
unapt for such high speculation have felt the shadows 
growing transparent upon their path. The Stoics as 
well as the Platonists : — with their Semitic affinities, 
their ethical spirit, and their comparative disdain of 
physics — were thus impelled to set the soul in a kingly 
place, and to gird it about with vast relations. So, 
only, could Stoicism have survived, not as a temper, 
but as a philosophy, as giving a measure of probable 
explication to the mysterious spirit in man. 

Haunted as this is with strange reminiscences, that 
almost hint at preexistence, alive as it is with august 
expectations, capable of moods of which no language 
can be the interpreter, feeling itself in kinship of na- 
ture with minds which surpass it, and with ranges of 
experience not yet attained, it must at least have a 
universe for its home, such as Seneca or Antoninus 
offered, if it may not be sure — as they were not — of 
transcendent personalities, and a creative and holy 
Will, with which to stand in spiritual communion. 1 

1(i A great and generous thing is the human soul. It suffers nq 

222 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

But whoever makes this final conception of its nature 
and place signal and governing to man's thought, ex- 
erts an influence over fine minds more commanding 
than that of soldier or statesman ; and the records of 
his interpreting discourse are more quickening to such 
than those of any arts or empires. Whatever takes 
the exalting influence of the spheres supernatural, 
and of our intrinsic relation to them, out of philoso- 
phy, can only strip it of its essential grace and re- 
nown. 

I need scarcely remind you what ethereal elements, 
graceful and noble, have been imparted by the same 
immense force to all best forms of human expression, 
in poetry, art, or the eloquence which has swayed 
and exalted men's minds ; or what energies have 
flowed from it into history and society, giving them, 
in fact, whatever they possess which holds to them 
permanently the admiration of mankind. 

bounds to be set for it save tbose wbicb are common to it with God. 
. . . Its country is whatever the highest universe includes in its 
compass. . . . It does not allow limitations of time. 'All years,' 
it says, ' are mine ; ' no age is closed against great spirits, all time is 
pervious to thought. . . . One day the secrets of nature shall be 
disclosed to thee, the darkness shall be dispersed, a shining light shall 
smite upon thee from every side. Think how great the brightness 
shall be of so many celestial bodies, mingling their luster ! No cloud 
shall trouble the clear serene ; each side of heaven shall shine with 
equal splendor ; day and night are but vicissitudes of the lower at- 
mosphere." — Seneca, Ep. Mor., cii. 

"Whithersoever thou turnest thyself, thou shalt see him [God] 
meeting with thee ; nothing is void of him ; he himself fills all his 
work. Call him Nature, Fate, Fortune : all are names of the same 
God, variously exercising his power." — Seneca. De Benef., Lib. iv., 
cap. viii. 

Compare "Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," xi. 1 ; ix. 28. 

223 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

The supernatural element in the mechanism of 
poems is certainly not needful to their highest effect. 
It may, perhaps, repulse the mind, as an over-bold 
effort to bring the supernal into such a contact with 
our palpable sphere as its august supremacy forbids. 
Yet even this is not always without its impression on 
the sensitive spirit, which meets it with indefinite 
throbs of response, as cavern-waves tremble in sym- 
pathy with far-off tides. 

The wine-colored waters breaking around the high- 
beaked ships, the camp-fires glittering on the plain, 
the splendor of armor shining in the air as with the 
flash of mountain fires, the troubled dust rising in 
mist before the tramp of rapid feet, greaves with their 
silver clasps, helmets crested with horsehair plumes, 
the marvelous shield, with triple border, blazoned with 
manifold intricate device, and circled by the ocean- 
stream, the changeful and impetuous fight, the anguish 
and rage, and the illustrious funeral-pile — not by these, 
though moving before us in epic verse, and touched 
with iridescent lights by the magic of genius, is the 
mind held captive to the Iliad, as by its shadowy 
morning-time spirit of " surmise and aspiration " ; by 
the tender and daring divine illusions, which see the 
air quick with veiled Powers, and the responding 
earth the haunted field of their Olympian struggle 
and debate. 1 

1 " We talked of Homer. I remarked how real and direct the inter- 
position of the gods seems. ' That is infinitely delicate and human, ' 
said Goethe, ' and I thank heaven that the times are gone by when the 
French were permitted to call this interposition of the gods ' ' ma- 
chinery. ' ' But, really, to learn to appreciate merits so vast required 
some time, for it demanded a complete regeneration of their modes of 
culture.' " — Eckermann's Conv. with Goethe, Feb. 24, 1830. 

224 



THE RECOGNITION OP THE SUPERNATURAL 

The circles of hell into which Dante entered, be- 
neath the dim and sad inscription — in which he heard 
with fainting spirit the story of Francesca, whose city 
of fire, and river of blood, and sterile plain with 
scorching flakes, he pictured on immortal verse — the 
snow-white rose, of saintly multitudes, with faces of 
flame and wings of gold, which he beheld when in the 
upturned gaze of Beatrice he had seen the day new- 
risen on the day, the Eternal Glory which he was at 
last permitted to touch with unconsumed sight, and of 
which he would leave some sparkle for coming time — 
we know how the genius of Michael Angelo, austere 
and vast, was impressed by all this ; how it reappears 
in spirit on the walls which he glorified ; * how other 
masters have shown the same impress, at Florence and 
at Pisa. It were certainly wholly too much to affirm 
that in its bold and terrible ministry to the sense of 
something outlying time, and of transcendent reality, 
lay nothing of that magnificent power over Italy and 
Europe which only rose in ascension when the stately 
tomb closed at Kavenna. 

And so in Milton : the floods and whirlwinds of 
tempestuous fire with which the rebellious are over- 
whelmed, the burning marl vaulted with flame, the 
battle on aerial plains, where spirits are armed in ada- 
mant and gold, while the Messiah rides sublime, on 
sapphire .throne, in the crystalline, sky — surely it 

1 "How deeply the study of Dante influenced his art appears not 
only in the lower part of the ' Last Judgment ' : we feel that source 
of stern and lofty inspiration in his style at large ; nor can we reckon 
what the world lost when his volume of drawings in illustration of 
the Divine Comedy perished at sea." — Symonds' " Eenaissance in 
Italy," Appendix II, page 514. 

o 225 



(DILATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

hardly can be denied that something of unsurpassed 
splendor and power has streamed from thence into 
English letters. 

The very construction of the great poems which 
mark eras in history thus incorporates the conception 
of realms unseen, whose energies images only suggest, 
whose vastness is too wide to even loosely " zone the 
sun." In fanciful discovery, or mysterious adumbra- 
tion, they people the air with glooms or glories be- 
yond the measure of human thought ; and this is part 
of their hold on the world. The ^Eneid has been 
called, not unjustly, a " religious epic." 

But deeper and more intimate is the power which 
enters into the inmost life of poetry from the spiritual 
cognizance of spheres above sense. It would be pre- 
sumptuous for me to say this, before these honored 
and laureled poets, if it were not their presence, with 
the lesson of their work, which prompts the saying. 
Poets sing best, according to the illustrious Greek 
master of thought and style, when carried out of 
themselves by a divine madness, and possessed by an 
influence which then their words impart to others. 1 

1 "For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful 
poems, uot as works of art, but because they are inspired and pos- 
sessed. . . . They tell us that "they gather their strains from 
honeyed fountains, out of the gardens and dells of the Muses ; thither, 
like the bees, they wing their way ; and this is true. For the poet is 
a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him 
until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no 
longer in him : when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless 
and unable to utter his oracles. . . . For in this way the God 
would seem to indicate to us, and not allow us to doubt, that these 
beautiful poems are not human or of man, but divine and of gods ; 
and that the poets are only the interpreters of the gods, by whom they 
are severally possessed. ' ' — Ion, 533-4. 

226 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

And. this surpassing mystical afflatus conies with ut- 
most power upon them when the high intimations of 
realms beyond the empyrean surprise their souls. In 
silence, oftenest, though sometimes as with convulsing 
force, the transfiguring power falls on the spirit at- 
tuned to song. 

Then even nature is more clearly interpreted, in its 
deeper meanings ; because, as Joubert says, the poet 
with rays of light so purges and clarifies material 
forms, that we are permitted to see the universe as it 
exists in the thought of its author. 1 

Even the beauty which picturesque verse loves to 
celebrate depends for its tender and supreme recogni- 
tion on such spiritual insight. It is a recent notion of 
physicists that beauty is never an end in itself, in the 
outward and evident scheme of things, but exists only 
to serve utilities. The notion, I must think, has its 
root in another — that the system has originated, not 
in intelligence and beneficent purpose, but in the de- 
velopment of mechanical forces. The apprehension of 
a prescient ordaining mind, behind all phenomena, 
loving beauty for its own sake, and delighting to lodge 
it in the curl of the wood or the sheen of the shell, as 
well as in the petals and perfume of flowers, the crest 
of waves, or the prismatic round of the rainbow — this 
is indispensable to the clear recognition, or the sympa- 
thetic rendering, of even the outward beauty of na- 
ture. Then only does this stand in essential correla- 
tion with spiritual states, which find images in it; 

1 " Or, que fait le poete? A l'aide de certains rayons, il purge et 
vide les formes de matiere, et nous fait voir l'univers tel qu'il est dans 
la pensee de Dieu menie. II ne prend de toutes choses que ce qui leur 
vient du ciel." — Pensees, 285. 

227 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

while then alone does it knit the present, on which it 
casts its scattered lights, with vanished paradises, and 
spheres of beauty still unapproached. 

There is a transcendent mood of the spirit wherein 
the meanest flower that blows awakens thoughts too 
deep for tears ; when the grass blade is oracular, and 
the common bush seems " afire with God," and when 
the splendors of closing day repeat the flash of jasper 
and beryl. It is when the soul is keenly conscious of 
relations to systems surpassing sense, and to a creative 
personal Spirit by whom all things are interfused. 
Aside from that, the yellow primrose is nothing more ; 
and the glory of the sunset — seen from Sorrento, or 
seen from Cambridge — fails from the hues of lucid 
gold or glowing ruby, because there fall no more sug- 
gestions, from all their splendors, of realms beyond 
the fading vision. 

But if this be true of outward nature, how much 
more clearly of the spirit of man ! Then only can this 
be manifested to us in the mystery of verse, with any 
just interpretation of what is profound and typical in 
it, when it is recognized as personal, moral, of divine 
origin and divine affiliations, with unsounded futures 
waiting for it ; when, in other words, it is set in rela- 
tion with immense and surpassing realms of life. I 
may not properly illustrate from the living, but one 
example irresistibly suggests itself. Hawthorne's 
genius did not utter itself in rhyme, but how solitary, 
high-musing, it moves in this atmosphere of the essen- 
tial mystery of life, as in the tenebrous splendor of 
somber clouds, all whose edges burn with gold ! 

"Without something of this, poetry always is com- 
monplace. Outward action may be vividly pictured. 

228 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

Tragical events may find, fit memorial. The manifold 
pageants, popular or imperial, may march before us, 
through many cantos, as on a broad and brilliant 
stage. But these, alone, are as the paltry plumes of 
fire weed, taking the place of the burned forest, whose 
every tree-stem was " the mast of some great ammiral." 
The grand and imperative intuitions of the soul, which 
affirm the ideal, and are prophetic of things above na- 
ture — the "thoughts that wander through eternity," 
the love, prayer, passion, hope, which have no ulti- 
mate consummation on earth, and which in themselves 
predict immortality — these, which must furnish the 
substance of poetry, are only represented, in the most 
ductile and musical verse, upon the basis of the spirit- 
ual philosoj)hy. Poets differ, as do the colors which 
astronomy shows in the radiant suns — blue, purple, 
gold — bound in the firm alliances of the heavens. But 
a sun black in substance, and shooting bolts of dark- 
ness from it, were as easily conceivable as a Comtist 
Shakespeare or an agnostic Wordsworth. 

To all forms of art, in its higher departments, the 
same majestic supersensible influence is as obviously 
vital. Music — we cannot even imagine it, in sym- 
phonies and sonatas as those of Beethoven, in masses 
as of Haydn or Mozart, in fugue, oratorio, or the 
solemn Gregorian chant, except as it voices feeling 
and thought which are not fettered to the level of the 
earth ; except as it catches a secret inspiration from 
hopes, visions, supreme aspirations, which are free of 
the universe, and which overtop Time. This subtlest 
tone-speech, which, with its infinite wail or triumph, 
gives voice as language never could to what is pre- 
cious and passionate in us — this, if nothing else, de- 

229 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

clares man's relation, in the ultimate reach and revelry 
of his spirit, to something beyond the search of sense. 
No form of Keligion has been more dependent than is 
this august and delicate art on suggestions whose 
echo, except for it, no ear might hear. The triumph 
of Eesurrection, the awful chords of the Dies Irse, are 
themes for its mysterious ministry. Dr. Channing 
well said that it is " inexplicable " ; and that " the 
Christian world, under its power, has often attained 
to a singular consciousness of Immortality." Heard 
in the twilight, how often, with us, has it carried the 
spirit above shadow and show into immeasurable 
brightness and calm ! 

So in painting. We know what glory fell on the 
canvas when the supernal story of the Gospels 
streamed, with lights that seemed to come from 
above the earth, on the minds which moved the early 
pencils. From the Convent of Assisi, and from the 
inspiring legend of St. Francis, went the strong im- 
pulse of the Umbrian school. It is the middle-age 
spirit, feeling itself proximate to the gates of either 
heaven or hell, which breaks into expression in Cima- 
bue or Giotto, or in the figures of Fra Angelico — 
" embodied ecstasies," as they have been called, " upon 
a background of illuminated gold." The great col- 
lections find always among the works so inspired their 
masterpieces. It is not the portrait of Pontiff or Em- 
peror, or of any lovely matron or maid, it is not the 
vivid and elaborate picture of scenes of human coro- 
nation or debate, but it is the lucid and tranquil splen- 
dor that lies still on the Transfiguration, it is the 
solemn majesty of the Supper, or the vast and un- 
searchable tragedy of the Cross, thick with mysterious 

230 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

glooms — to which the observer always hastens, and 
the memory of which interprets art to him, as lifting 
the spirit toward realms transcendent. The Holy 
Night of Correggio illuminates the gallery. The 
Magdalen, or the Master, the shining wave of seraphic 
wings, or the gleam of the trumpet of final summons, 
are in the atmosphere of pinacothek or palace where 
Italy and Germany assemble their treasures. Cheru- 
bic faces glow on the canvas where Raphael enthrones 
the Virgin Mother. The earthly spirit of Rubens 
himself loses its grossness, his pencil becomes exalting 
and tender, in saintly sadness, when he confronts the 
Descent from the Cross. 

So marbles rise to immortal renown, not in the 
busts of Aristides or Antoninus, of Cato or Trajan, or 
of the builder of Roman empire, but in the forms 
which perpetuate among men the early visions of su- 
pernatural grace and majesty, in the virginal Diana or 
the Apollo. The stone itself seems almost quickened 
into poetry or music, when angelic figures, apostolic 
raptures, the majesty of the lawgiver taught of God, 
break palpitating through it. And when Thorwald- 
sen has moulded it at last into the perfect image of 
the Christ, as his mind discerns that, he feels at once 
that his genius is failing. His satisfaction is his sen- 
tence ; since his conception of that to which nature is 
only the vassal no more transcends his imitative 
touch. 

So in lordliest buildings — it is always their connec- 
tion with what is unseen which gives the final majesty 
and rhythm. It is not the palace, with splendid fa- 
cade, and internal wealths of mosaic and marquetry — 
it is not the fortress, the theater, or the bourse, which 

.331 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

best expresses or animates the genius whose subduing 
thought sets in motion the quarry. One must build to 
the praise of a Being above, to build the noblest me- 
morial of himself. The thought of the something un- 
searchable and immense, toward which all human life 
is tending — the thought of domains of mysterious 
height, and unhorizoned expanse, with which the ex- 
pectant soul in man has already relations — this must 
exalt and sanctify the spirit, that it may pile the stub- 
born rock into superb and lovely proportions. And 
with it must come a sense of intervention front such 
higher realms, to lift the environed human spirit to- 
ward that which transcends it, and to open the paths 
to immortal possession. Then Brunelleschi may set 
his dome on unfaltering, piers. Then Angelo may 
verily " hang the Pantheon in the air." Then the un- 
known builder, whose personality disappears in his 
work, may stand an almost inspired mediator between 
the upward-looking thought and the spheres overhead. 
Each line then leaps with a swift aspiration, as the 
vast structure rises, in nave and transept, into pointed 
arch and vanishing spire. The groined roof grows 
dusky with majestic glooms ; while, beneath, the win- 
dows flame as with apocalyptic light of jewels. An- 
gelic presences, sculptured upon the portal, invite the 
wayfarer, and wave before him their wings of promise. 
Within is a worship which incense only clouds, which 
spoken sermons only mar. The building itself be- 
comes a worship, a Gloria in Excelsis, articulate in 
stone ; the noblest tribute offered on earth, by any art, 
to Him from whom its impulse came, and with the in- 
effable majesty of whose spirit all skies are filled ! 
Not art, alone, feels this vast impulse which falls in 

232 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

its quickening splendor from above. It enters into 
human life ; gives conquering courage to human soci- 
ety ; develops what is noblest of power in the race, 
and becomes the spring of its grandest endeavors. 
With illustrations of the energy which has been poured 
from it, into the action of persons and of peoples, his- 
tory is vivid. How it looms before us in the vast 
panorama of the Crusades — setting nations in move- 
ment, shattering feudalism, opening the way for Inter- 
national Law, augmenting men's knowledge and giv- 
ing positive expansion to their minds, bringing Europe 
and Asia face to face, and pushing men forth on those 
restless quests which at last picked up this continent 
from the seas ! Plainly, such movements were possi- 
ble only as fealty to beings and to interests of a par- 
amount authority appeared to demand them. Their 
banners could do nothing else than bear the emblem 
of a world supernatural. 

We need not go back to times mediaeval. It was the 
same incalculable force which burst into almost equal 
exhibition in the terrible struggle of the ISTetherland 
burghers against the power and rage of Spain — which 
one of your recent illustrious members has celebrated 
in a prose rich and melodious as an epic. That fierce 
and almost unending fight on sea and land, the des- 
perate self-devotion which cut the dykes, and would 
give the drowned plains to the sea rather than yield 
them to the invader, the absolutely unconquerable will 
which defeat could not daunt nor delays weary, nor 
the death of the leader fatally break, the final reck- 
lessness of all pain and all assault, which bore starva- 
tion and did not flinch, and which never would yield 
while a hand remained to light a match, or an arm 

233 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

was left to lift a lance — all which makes the story 
sublime, and in fame immortal, came from a faith in 
things unseen. It was in the measureless energy of 
that, that the weak at last conquered the strong, and 
impassioned peasants, citizens, women, expelled from 
their coasts the richest and most insolent power of the 
world. Hardly another scene in history is more sig- 
nificant or impressive than that of the starving people, 
when the siege of Leyden had been suddenly raised, 
staggering to the church to offer their faint but prais- 
ing worship, before their lips had tasted bread. 1 

The same force was shown in the Huguenots as 
well — whose distinguished descendants have had high 
honor in our history ; and the same, as clearly, by the 
Puritans of England. The invincible Ironsides who 
bore without shrinking the shattering shock of Ru- 
pert's charge, were plain house-fathers, susceptible as 
others to fear or pain, and with no rare supremacy of 
nature. But they thought, at least, that they knew 
One in whom they had believed ; that He was a King 
who in righteousness did make war ; and that for His 

1 "Magistrates and citizens, wild Zealanders, emaciated burgher 
guards, sailors, soldiers, women, children — nearly every living person 
within the walls — all repaired without delay to the great church, stout 
Admiral Boisot leading the way. The starving and heroic city, which 
had been so firm in its resistance to an earthly king, now bent itself 
in humble gratitude before the King of kings. After prayers, the 
whole vast congregation joined in the thanksgiving hymn. Thousands 
of voices raised the song, but few were able to carry it to its conclusion ; 
for the universal emotion, deepened by the music, became too full for 
utterance. The hymn was abruptly suspended, while the multitude 
wept like children. This scene of honest pathos terminated, the nec- 
essary measures for distributing food and for relieving the sick were 
taken by the magistracy." — The Eise of the Dutch Eepublic, Vol. II, 
pages 576-7 T 

?34 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

faithful, amid the circles of sublimer existence, crowns 
were reserved. No angels hovered, " clad in white 
samite," upon their dim and murky skies. No celes- 
tial panoplies were ranged in front of their grim lines. 
But " the good old Cause " for which they stood, to 
their apprehension, was related not only to liberties 
below, but to welfares immortal overhead. They 
strove for interests so supreme that all the spheres had 
a stake in the struggle ; and, in the unsubduable 
strength which thence possessed them, they conquered 
great captains, flung their challenge to the haughtiest 
powers, and set the foot on the neck of their king. 

Wherever conscientious and consecrated men have 
been ranged in stern battle for the liberty and the 
law which to them were divine, the same energy has 
appeared. The intimate sense of personal freedom is 
based most securely on the radical sense of human re- 
lationship to perennial systems of power and life. 
Democracy there has its surest foundation; the dif- 
ferences of social position and training becoming im- 
perceptible beneath the height of this relation, as the 
different heights of house-roofs disappear, when meas- 
ured against Canopus or Orion. 

In our own protracted Revolutionary struggle 
there was not wanting this impulse from on high, 
though it was scarcely, as signal, perhaps, as it else- 
where has been. But religious conviction, as well as 
political instinct or theory, had its part in the contest. 
Sermons and prayers were as really engaged, on be- 
half of Independence, as were muskets and howitzers. 
To many of the nobler leaders of thought it seemed 
apparent that the scattered populations who had been 
so singularly brought here and trained, in seeking 

235 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

their final separation from Great Britain, were mov- 
ing on the lines of a strategy above man's, and had 
forces of Providence for their mighty pioneers. The 
feeling grew stronger as the struggle went on. It 
was scarcely, I think, so vivid and impressive with 
those who almost without expectation fought and fell 
on yonder hill, that bright June day, as it came to 
be afterward — with those who carried their banners 
unbent after the frightful Long Island disaster, with 
those who sternly outwatched the winter at Yalley 
Forge, with those who yet waged the wasting bat- 
tle, until at Yorktown they saw its end. They were 
mechanics, laborers, farmers, who had seemed to 
have no chance whatever against disciplined troops. 
But aids unexpected had come to them from afar. 
On the edge of defeat they had more than once 
snatched surprising victory. And while, no doubt, 
"a hundred motives intermingled to keep them faith- 
ful, there grew an impression, of which they par- 
took, that the divine plan was somehow connected 
with their success, and that the developed inde- 
pendence of the country had relation to schemes, 
moral and Christian, in which the future should 
exult. One hears the diapason of such a supreme 
conception of things rolling beneath the crash of 
guns and the flurries of debate. It is that concep- 
tion, in thoughtful minds, which ever since has lifted 
that struggle to the higher levels of historical signifi- 
cance. 

Assuredly such a sense of relation to ideal interests, 
and to welfares more permanent than any of Time, 
was essentially involved in our late Civil War. It 
was out of no atheistic philosophy, it was under no 

236 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

overshadowing impression of the sole reality of that 
which is physical, that the vast enthusiasms of that 
supreme time sprang up and bloomed. The young 
glad life which went down in blood on ghastly fields, 
— of which you have here so many memorials ! — it was 
offered at the summons of interests so illustrious that 
all the suns are only their fleeting physical basis. It 
recognized man, on behalf of whom it was given, as 
related to worlds beyond the sweep of human sense, 
and as so having indefeasible rights of culture and of 
worship. An ethical system found its voice in the 
long cannonade — sovereign in the earth, because sov- 
ereign for all spheres. The supremacy of the spirit 
which rose over dangers, dungeons, deaths, had its 
source in the sense of a spiritual universe, in which 
all grand and lovely souls are powers and peers. The 
sacrifice was too great, the following anguish too over- 
whelming, if such a universe does not exist. Only 
from it, and from our essential relationship to it, 
could have come the paramount moral impulse, suffi- 
cient at once to inspire the daring and heal the grief. 
Nor is it in such vast contests alone that the im- 
pulse has been shown of this recognition of vital 
realms surpassing the bounds of space and time. In 
the moral impression made on the world by teachers 
like Edwards, or like Channing — frail, but majestic in 
spiritual force — it has been manifest, as clearly as afore- 
time in Bernard or Anselm. Universities have sprung 
from it, and in it have found their vitalizing force. 
They were founded, no doubt, in a credulous time, 
when many things seemed real and sure which to us 
are grotesque. None the less, however, were they 
founded, in the old world and here, upon the con- 

237 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

viction of vast and unseen vital domains, to which 
man is related ; upon the sense of divine dignities 
thus investing the soul; upon the impression that 
Time is great only as bearing in its scant round the 
quickening seeds of further destiny, that the earth is 
great only as associated with more sublime realms, 
and that wealth and wisdom both are regal when they 
serve the welfare of that on-looking and inestimable 
spirit beside which the stars are painted dust. 

It was natural that under impressions like these 
the humble school of William of Champeaux should 
grow to the great University of Paris; that out of 
obscure conventual institutes should rise the many 
affiliated colleges of Cambridge and Oxford. It was 
natural that in the utmost poverty of the early ISTew 
England this great and distinguished university should 
be founded — for Christ and the Church, or for the 
Truth. As long as such convictions continue, con- 
necting man by the frame of his being with the vast 
and enduring over-world, discerning in the mystery 
of his life divine energies and immortal predictions, 
the institutions which were born of them will remain, 
expanding still to larger proportions, and chronicling 
the centuries with their concentric rings of growth. 
But if the time should ever come when materialistic 
or monistic theories shall supersede the ancient 
thought — finding in mind only a result of mechan- 
ical force inducing a certain stream of feelings, dis- 
crediting existence amid the immensities, and either 
denying a personal Spirit who frames the creation, or 
relegating the thought of Him to the regions of an 
uncertain hypothesis — universities may continue, and 
possibly for a time may be physically enlarged, but 

238 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

the glory will have vanished from library and labora- 
tory, as well as from chapel. There may be still 

those obstinate questionings 

Of sense, and outward things ; 

but the serene and large contemplation, the profound 
introspection, the deep delight in art, philosophy, 
heroism, song, the far-exulting sweep of the spirit in its 
vital expectation, over eons and spheres yet unrevealed 
— these will depart. The earthly figure alone will con- 
tinue, without aegis or aureole ; and ■ the short-lived 
animal, whose spirit is to turn to dust with his brain, 
will hardly look without amazement upon the service 
and sacrffice of the fathers. 

So it is, by an unchangeable law, that the Christian 
Keligion, through the frankness, breadth, simplicity, 
grandeur, with which it affirms the supernatural, and 
makes that apparent to the mind of the world, becomes 
the chief patron of such universities, and pours from 
its unwasting force a supreme inspiration on every en- 
deavor for mental and for spiritual culture. Men may 
criticize its records, and variously interpret some of its 
doctrines ; but wherever it goes, there breathes an in- 
fluence into the total air of society out of unsounded 
depths of age and space, and from spheres bright with 
illuminated souls ; and the tree will bourgeon in sun- 
less wastes, sooner than any great school of learning 
will blpom in abundant perennial vigor without the 
light of Bethlehem upon it. 

Gentlemen, of the Phi Beta Kappa Society : 

In the measure of whatever power we have, it surely 

belongs to us to endeavor, if only as considerate of 

239 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

true secular welfare, that this recognition, profound 
and prophetic, of the greatness of the personal spirit 
in man, and of its relation to sublime realms of uni- 
versal life, shall not pass away from our eager and 
commanding American society. Here is the sudden 
assembling of the nations, attracted by opportunity, 
compacted in liberty. Here is the wealth, of furrowed 
field and forest height, of river-beds gleaming, and 
hills crowded, with waiting metals. The land rever- 
berates with the roll of swift wheels, and waters echo 
the throb of the engine, while mechanisms spring from 
the virile and fruitful life of the people, almost as roses 
from out the juicy shoots of June. But everything in 
the future of whatever is best here depends on the 
maintenance of this sense of relationship, in our imme- 
diate incipient life, to domains of experience of which 
no telescope gives us a hint, but which send out to 
meet us august premonitions. Art, poetry, a noble 
philosophy, as really as theology, have here their con- 
dition ; even generous liberties, copious and continu- 
ing public charities, whatever is truly distinguished in 
government, whatever is morally great in history. 

We stand surrounded by no such monuments of an 
eminent Past as are centers of fine incitement abroad. 
All the more is it needful, on this unsheltered conti- 
nent, that we recognize the enduring systems of life, 
older than suns, above cities and states and stellar 
spaces, and feel, as Pascal said, that " then only is man 
great and incomparable, when considered according to 
his end. 35 1 The searching of nature goes on all .the 
time, with accelerating speed, and the noblest success. 

1 "Thoughts of Pascal," Chap, ii, Sec. 14. 
240 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

All the more, I judge, should it be ours, in whatever 
profession, of whatever communities or special opin- 
ions, to see that man is not " lost," as one has said, 
" in the bosom of the immensity and splendor of na- 
ture " ; to maintain the preeminence of the sovereign 
personal spirit in him overfall nerve-tissues, with all 
cerebral convolutions ; to maintain the accordant su- 
premacy in the universe of the spiritual order over the 
physical, the immutable sublimity, the superlative 
splendor, of realms of existence to which the prophesy- 
ing spirit points, as having with them already, in its 
mysterious and prophetical life, embryonic connection. 

If that impression does not remain on this intrepid 
and powerful people, into whose veins all nations pour 
their mingling blood, it will be our immense calamity. 
Public action, without it, will lose the dignity of con- 
secration. Eloquence, without it, will miss what is 
loftiest, will give place to a careless and pulseless dis- 
quisition, or fall to the flatness of political slang. Life, 
without it, will lose its sacred and mystic charm. So- 
ciety, without it, will fail of inspirations, and be 
drowned in an animalism whose rising tides will keep 
pace with its wealth. 

It is the delightful assurance of Science that the tear 
and the star are equally embraced in an infinite scheme 
— " the glowworm, and the fire-sea of the sun " — and 
that one law regulates the phyllotactic arrangement 
of leaves upon stems and the vast revolutions of the 
planets in the heavens. In like manner it is our pre- 
rogative to feel that the humblest life, which has in- 
tellect and will in it, is associated intimately with un- 
reached cycles, surpassing thought, to which it has 
organic relation. On the full assurance of this funda- 
p 241 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

mental scheme of the universe has rested hitherto 
the philosopher's enthusiasm, the martyr's self-sacri- 
fice, the hero's endurance. On this affirmative and 
solid impression has securely been builded whatever 
has been grandest and most charming in the past. 
Only that which shall make the same conviction as 
wide and controlling in the centuries to come can give 
to them true power and beauty, esthetic grace, intel- 
lectual vision, moral wisdom. 

It is for us, then, personally to live in the clear ap- 
prehension of that unmeasured over-world, the shadow 
of whose glory fell not on Hebrew hills alone, but on 
Grecian, Persian, Indian heights, some echoes of whose 
magisterial harmonies have been heard in all superior 
spirits, and the touch of whose far-shining prediction 
on any pure mind makes hope elate and purpose high. 
We do not doubt this, I am sure. But high contem- 
plation, with a deep and delicate moral experience, 
alone can give us that certainty of it which the great 
souls have had. Retreating inward, we shall ascend 
upward, till the vital realms surpassing Nature become 
luminous to our thought ; and then — as jewels have 
sometimes been fancied to become impenetrated in 
their sensitive substance with the splendor of sun- 
shine, till they emitted a subsequent luster through 
darkening shades — our spirits, steeped in this supreme 
vision, shall brighten others with irradiating glow. 

Nothing nobler than this can be proposed to any 
man. It is the supremest human office, in whatever 
relations, and whatever position, rising above the in- 
vesting physical forces and laws, discerning the in- 
tensity and the boundlessness of life with which the 
spirit in man is allied, to make these also inspiring to 

«42 



THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 

others: that thus through us may be transfused a 
glory from them into the minds which we affect ; that 
we may cast from our brief years something of this 
transfiguring light upon the life of coming times ; that 
we may honor as we ought that visioned and master- 
ful spirit within, whose thought and love bear in them- 
selves immortal presage; that we may honor Him 
above, in whose unseen infolding life the universe 
rests, 

And make our branches lift a golden fruit, 
Into the bloom of heaven. 



243 



Y 

JOHN WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST 
ENGLISH BIBLE 



Ari Oration delivered in the Academy of Music, New York, Decem- 
ber 2, 1880, at the invitation of the Board of Managers of the Ameri- 
can Bible Society. 



JOHN WYCLIFFE AND THE FIKST ENGLISH 

BIBLE 



Mr. President : Ladies, and Gentlemen : 

On the left bank of the Rhine, on the site of the 
ancient Roman camp, afterward an imperial colony, 
which is associated in history with Tiberius and Ger- 
manicus, with Agrippina, mother of Nero, and with 
the early fame of Trajan, has been recently completed 
a magnificent work of religion and of art, of which 
more than six centuries have witnessed the progress. 
After delays immensely protracted, after such changes 
in society and government, in letters, arts, and in 
prevalent forms of religious faith, that the age which 
saw its solemn foundation has come to seem almost 
mythical to us, by contributions in which peoples have 
vied with princes, and in which separated countries 
and communions have gladly united, the cathedral of 
Cologne has been carried to its superb consummation, 
and the last finial has been set upon the spires which 
at length fulfil the architect's design. 

Attendant pomps, of imperial pageantry, were 
naturally assembled on such an occasion ; but they 
can have added no real impressiveness to the struc- 
ture itself, with its solid strength matching its lofty 
and lovely proportions, the vast columns of the nave 
lifting upon them plume-like pillars, the majestic 

347 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

choir, of stone and glass, with its soft brilliance and 
exquisite tracery, beautiful as a poet's dream, the 
soaring openwork of the spires, absorbing and mould- 
ing hills of rock in their supreme and ethereal grace. 
It seems impossible not to apply to it the words 
which Gibbon applied to St. Peter's: "The most 
glorious structure that ever has been applied to the 
use of religion." 1 It is impossible not to rejoice that 
the common sentiments of beauty and of worship 
survive the changes of civilization, so that distant 
centuries join hands in the work now finished and 
crowned, and the completion of this grandest of ca- 
thedrals in Northern Europe fitly attracts the atten- 
tion of Christendom. 

It is a work at first sight insignificant in compari- 
son with this, which we have met to commemorate 
this evening : the translation of the Scriptures into 
the common English tongue, begun by John Wyc- 
liffe five centuries ago, and brought to completeness 
in these recent days by the hands of English and 
American scholars. It may seem that the vision of 
the majestic cathedral is too stately and splendid to 
be set in front of a story so simple, and in parts so 
familiar, as that which we are here to recall. But I 
think it will appear that the work which we celebrate 
is the nobler of the two ; that from all the costly and 
skilful labors, now completed on the banks of the 
Rhine, we arise to this : even as there one advances 
to the altar, supreme in its significance, through the 
decorated doorways, along the vast nave, and under 
the rhythmic and haughty arches. To us, at least, the 
voice of God becomes articulate through the book; 

1 " Decline and Fall," Vol. VIII, page 466. 

248 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

while the building only shows us the magnificent 
achievement of human genius, patience and wealth, 
bringing to Him their unsurpassed tribute. 

It is, however, a very plain tale which I have to 
tell ; and the interest of it must lie in its substance, 
not in any ornaments of language or of thought as- 
sociated with it. In order to tell or to hear it aright 
,we have to recall many things which lie back of it, 
which alone can set it clearly before us. 

That the governing authorities in the Christian 
world should have ever refused to the revered Scrip- 
tures, on which the common faith was founded, the 
widest distribution in the various languages spoken 
by the peoples holding that faith, is a fact so peculiar 
that we easily ascribe it to a crafty ambition or an 
arrogant self-will, and dismiss it as thus superficially 
explained. We forget how deeply rooted it was in 
an immense system of thought and of government, 
and through what silent organic processes it came to 
evolution into custom and rule. 

Of course it contradicted the earlier usage and plan 
of the Church. The Hebrew and Chaldaic Scriptures 
had been written in the dialects familiar to the people 
among whom and for whom they were prepared, be- 
fore and after the Eastern captivity. When Greek 
became a customary speech with those dispersed in 
distant cities, the Alexandrian version of these Scrip- 
tures was made ; and, as we know, in the time of the 
Master, it was commonly read and reverently ex- 
pounded by the teachers of religion, as it afterward 
long continued in use with Christian converts. 

The Evangelists and Apostles, after the Lord had 
left the earth, wrote accounts of his life, with argu- 

249 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

ments of doctrine, precepts, promises, and prophetic 
admonitions, in the language familiar to themselves 
and their disciples — the vigorous, copious, Hellenistic 
Greek, to which the commerce of the time had given 
wide distribution, while the Septuagint had given it 
consecration. They sought to reach not scholars 
only, or lettered persons, but all peoples who shared 
in the general culture, and all classes of people, with 
the writings upon which their souls were engaged, 
and in which they felt themselves moved and helped 
by the Divine Spirit. The preference of St. Paul was 
shared by all ; it was his preference when dictating or 
tracing the large and slow characters, as well as 
when preaching : " I had rather speak five words with 
my understanding, that by my voice I might teach 
others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown 
tongue." And it was by these Scriptures, in the 
language which then had chief currency in the world, 
and in which the Roman Law itself was subsequently 
written, that the knowledge of Him in whom is the 
light and the hope of mankind was soon distributed 
over vast spaces. 

Yet again, as subsequent need arose that the Scrip- 
tures be put into other languages, to reach more di- 
rectly remoter peoples, this was done without opposi- 
tion, with encouragement indeed, of Church author- 
ities. So came the early Latin versions, for use in 
North Africa or in Italy, in the second century. So 
came the later translation of Jerome, from the 
originals, which became afterward practically the 
Bible of "Western Christendom. The Syriac version, 
which before the end of the second century carried 
the Scriptures to the Euphrates, followed by others 

§50 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

in the same tongue ; the Thebaic, and Memphitic, 
which made them equally at home on the Nile ; the 
^Ethiopic, of the fourth century ; the Gothic, of the 
same period, made by Ulphilas ; the Armenian, of the 
fifth century ; the Arabic, Persian, and all the others, 
to the Sclavonic of the ninth century, reveal the same 
impulse of wisdom and zeal, as all are designed to 
bring the quickening Word of God into contact with 
those to whom the Hebrew and the Greek were not 
familiar. Certainly, for centuries after the Ascension, 
it would have seemed as absurd to restrain the Scrip- 
tures to languages not understood by the people, as it 
would have been on the crest of Olivet to thrust veils 
of darkness beneath the cloud which received the 
Lord, and to leave the disciples uncertain of His glory. 
The latest and fiercest Roman persecution, under 
Galerius and Diocletian, aimed especially to destroy 
the Church by destroying its sacred and life-giving 
books. 

Perhaps nothing else more signally shows the novel 
and alien character of the power which in subsequent 
centuries grew up in Christendom than does the fact 
that it wholly departed from these primitive traditions, 
and wrought against them, of settled purpose, with 
restless energy, by an instinct of its nature. I need 
not repeat the story of its rise. I may only remind 
you how its portentous physical development allied 
itself naturally with a peculiar doctrine and temper, 
as the primitive popular church organization, whose 
picture is ineffaceably preserved on immortal records, 
gave place by degrees to the splendid and vast imperial 
system, enthroned in the capital which still fascinates 
the fancy and awes the imagination of the cultivated 

251 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

world, having prelates for its princes, and extending 
its sway more widely over Europe than had the empire 
which it followed and surpassed. 

This system was by no means wholly for evil. Un- 
doubtedly, certain needs of the time found in it their 
special supply, and important benefits to medieval 
society are fairly ascribed to it. It held the tumultu- 
ous populations of Europe to some degree of civilized 
order, amid stupendous changes and strifes, the fall of 
the empire, the inrush of barbarians from wood and 
waste, the utter breaking up of the ancient governing 
order of things. When the sovereignty of force 
threatened to become the law of the planet, it asserted 
the supremacy of the spiritual order over the secular, 
in divine adjustments. It built monasteries, for those 
who sought equally seclusion and society, with indus- 
try, study, and the worship of God. It defended 
those monasteries by sanctions of religion, which even 
breasts that wore mail, and hands that held lances, had 
to regard. It preserved in their libraries the scattered 
remains of the classical literature, as well as the 
Scriptures ; and by the labor of monks it multiplied 
copies of what thus was preserved, and transmitted 
them to us. It built cathedrals, and abbey-churches, 
vast poems in stone, which inspire the fond admiration 
of Christendom by their melodious and consecrated 
beauty. It established universities, for the teaching 
of its doctrines, but with an inevitably wider effect on 
the culture of mankind. It proclaimed the " truce of 
God," to mitigate and restrain, where it might not 
prohibit, the savage and sanguinary combats of men. 
It loosed the bonds of human slavery from multitudes 
of victims, and honorably refused to recognize distinc- 

252 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

tions of bond or free among its officers. It made the 
stoutest baron tremble, in the ecstasy of his passion, 
before the invisible energy of the curse with which it 
could blast his cruelty or his lust. Sometimes, indeed, 
upon kings themselves, when their tyranny was most 
fierce, it laid a hand far heavier than theirs, and held 
them in enforced and reluctant submission. 

Surely it was something to have peoples thus taught 
that there was an authority higher than of princes, a 
right more imperative, a tribunal more august. And 
I cannot but think it beyond dispute that a power was 
exerted from the banks of the Tiber, in different 
directions, between the fifth and the fourteenth cen- 
turies, to restrain some of the most malign evils, and 
encourage some of the germs of good, in that fateful 
and perilous time. It taught the nations, however 
obscurely, their Christian relationship to each other, 
and prepared the way for International Law ; while 
the out-ranging missions of Europe, for the conquest 
of the heathenism which still girt it about, took 
steadiness, ardor, and a regulating order, from this 
vast Church authority, and smote with more effective 
impact upon the mighty ring of darkness. 

The whole system which thus took the place in 
Europe of the earlier, simpler Christian economy, and 
whose existence was for many generations the sover- 
eign fact in the history of the Continent, appears now 
an anachronism, as truly as tournaments, feudal keeps, 
or iron helmets. The terrible crozier, before which 
baton and lance went down in fear, has no more place 
for such use in our times than has scale-armor, or the 
Genoese crossbow. But then it had a great purpose 
to serve ; and one who discerns the salutary ends 

253 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

which the Church as imperially organized accom- 
plished, may admire anew the patience and the wisdom 
whose silent grasp no power eludes, and which even 
man's wrath at last must praise. 

But now it is obvious that with this system of or- 
ganization had grown up one of doctrine and of wor- 
ship, and had been developed spiritual tendencies, 
whose effects were widely and dangerously evil; 
against which Christians had at length absolutely to 
rebel, to maintain or regain the Gospel of Christ. 
And here it was that the Scriptures met their deter- 
mined antagonist. 

The solemn setting apart of men to offices of per- 
manent prerogative and control, in a vast, ancient, and 
dominating Hierarchy, almost inevitably induced the 
assumption that the Church was in them, as Louis of 
France declared himself " the State," and that men 
must abide in communion with them on peril of losing 
eternal life. In their view, it had commission, this 
priestly Church, with affirmative voice to declare and 
unfold, even to supplement, what was taught in the 
Scriptures. It had power, as well, to communicate 
grace, transmitted through it by its Divine Head, on 
effectual sacraments : giving in baptism the germinant 
principle of spiritual life; restoring it in penance; 
nourishing and renewing it in other sacraments, most 
of all in the Eucharist. It was in orderly develop- 
ment of this system that the very body and blood of 
the Lord were at last affirmed to be in the wafer * — 
the infinite in the finite, the personal presence and 
glory of the Redeemer in material particles ; and that 
thenceforth the chief vehicle of grace to the soul 

1 At the Lateran Council, A. D. 1215. 
254 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

which received it was held to be not the word of the 
Master, but this figure of bread, over which thauma- 
turgic words had been spoken, and behind whose 
accidents was the hidden splendor and life of God's 
Son. 

With this came naturally a form of worship pic- 
torial and spectacular, rather than instructive; an 
homage paid to the hierarchies above ; the increasing 
adoration of the " Mother of God " ; and all the forms 
of doctrine and practice still presented by the modern 
representative of the middle-age Christendom. The 
entire system, in its gradual expansion to its ultimate 
surprising symmetry and vigor, rises before one in the 
pages of history as plainly as the chain of the Cor- 
dilleras on a recent ample topographical map. It 
corresponded with the vast politico-religious organiza- 
tion in which it was formulated. It seemed to supply 
the reason for that ; and it wrought, with and 
through it, with an energy seemingly inexhaustible. 

Of course, by its nature, the entire system was 
profoundly adverse to the popular reading of the 
Scriptures. It was surely conscious of many things, 
— in the worship of Saints, or of the Virgin, in the 
efficacy of sacraments, the traditional functions of 
prelates or the Pontiff — for which no warrant could 
be found in the "Word, if that did not distinctly con- 
tradict them, and foretell their mischiefs. To allow 
men to search the Scriptures for themselves was prac- 
tically to suspend the function of the Hierarchy, as 
the authorized expositor of the Divine teaching. All 
divisions of opinion might then be apprehended. A 
man might even come to feel that he had no further 
need of a priest, as the mediator between Christ and 

255 



OKATIOHS AND ADDRESSES 

his soul, but could go himself, in sorrow for sin or in 
petition for favor, to Him whose mind had touched 
his in the Gospel. It could not, indeed, have seemed 
inconceivable that an entire scheme of doctrine, based 
on the idea that faith in the Lord is that which jus- 
tifies, and that such faith has in it the power of the 
life everlasting, might thus finally appear in the 
world. And the whole pontifical organization would 
be in peril if such an exposition were given to the 
argument of the Pauline epistles. 

It must be observed, too, that what we hold — 
justly, we think — the evil effects of a long withhold- 
ing of the Scriptures from the people, came to furnish 
fresh argument for it. The fourfold significance rec- 
ognized in those Scriptures could only be discerned 
by devout and competent spirits. If then it had come 
to pass, as plainly as it had, that neither intellectual 
nor spiritual insight was commonly to be found in 
religious assemblies — that the people who bowed in 
adoration to images, less graceful than the Greek and 
less august than the Koman, who trusted in the wood 
of the Cross, who rang bells in the night to frighten 
the demons from the air, and who only felt the sanc- 
tity of an oath as it had been taken on ancient relics 
and unauthenticated bones, that these could scarcely 
be expected to feel the sublime pathos of the gospels, 
or to follow the excursions of Paul's inspired and 
rapid reason — all the more was it certain to those in 
authority that it would be casting pearls before swine, 
intoxicating weak and unprepared souls with precious 
cordials, to freely open the Scriptures to all. Un- 
doubtedly often, to devout minds, it seemed a token 
of reverence for these to keep them apart from ig- 

256 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

noble hands ; while it seemed equally a tenderness to 
those who might be seduced, through misconceiving 
the Word, into dangerous error. 

So it came to pass, in no flash of petulant arro- 
gance, by no inexplicable frenzy of councils, but by 
a logical moral progress, certain and governing, that 
the early plan of putting the writings in which Chris- 
tianity was declared to the world into the hand of 
every reader, for his guidance to the Master, or for his 
sweeter wisdom and grace, was suspended and antago- 
nized by the later plan of keeping all teaching in the 
hands of the priesthood, and reserving to a language 
understood by only the educated class the sacred 
books. Keverence for these books had preserved 
them in the monasteries with effectual care. It had 
caused them to be often transcribed by the monks, to 
be splendidly ornamented, superbly bound, embossed 
and enriched with gold and gems, till a copy was 
almost worth in commerce the price of a castle. l But 
it had hidden them from the touch of the laity with 
as jealous a care ; and the tendency to that was as 
unreturning as the steady slip of the stream to the 
sea. A distinct prohibition of the Scriptures to the 

1 The Abbot Angilbert gave to the Abbey of St. Eiquier, in A. D. 
814, a copy of the Gospels, "in letters of gold, with silver plates, 
marvellously adorned with gold and precious stones. ' ' Louis Debon- 
air gave to a monastery at Soissons a copy of the Gospels ' ' written in 
letters of gold, and bound in plates of the same metal, of the utmost 
purity." In A. D. 1022 the Emperor presented to the monastery of 
Monte Casino a copy of the Gospels " covered on one side with most 
pure gold, and most precious gems, written in uncial characters, and 
illuminated with gold." Many other like instances of costly copies 
of the Scriptures, or of parts of them, are noted in monastic records. — 
See Maitland's "Dark Ages,", pages 205-220. 
q 257 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

people wa^ promulgated at Toulouse, A. D. 1229. 1 It 
had been a rule of the Greek Church before. But 
particular decrees only uttered a rule which lay back 
of all, and was inherent in the system of thought from 
which they sprang. As that system became perfected, 
its tone grew sharper and more imperious. It watched 
its domains with a vigilance unsleeping. And he who 
thereafter would place the Scriptures, in a language 
familiar, before the people, must cross swords with 
the power which had kings for its vassals, their armies 
for its troops, and upon the plates of whose alleged 
supernal armor the fiercest chieftains had shivered 
their blades. 

But now it is also to be observed that against this 
tendency had been at least occasional resistance, by 
many of the best among the people, and of the priest- 
hood ; and that this had been as manifest as anywhere 
in that earlier England, which, after a frightful paraly- 
sis of its powers, had come, at just the time of Wyc- 
liffe, to its incipient resurrection. "We have to trace 
this history, also, to get his work, in its impulse, its 
meaning, and its fruitful effect, fully before us. 

The movements toward a more spiritual faith which 
at different times had appeared on the Continent — 
represented in part by the Paulicians, by Claude of 
Turin, by Peter de Bruys, by Arnold of Brescia, or, 
more largely, by Waldo and his followers — these seem 

1 " We also forbid the laity to possess any of the books of the Old or 
New Testament, unless, perhaps, the Psalter or Breviary for the 
Divine Offices, or the Hours of the Blessed Virgin, some, out of devo- 
tion, may wish to have ; but that any should have these books trans- 
lated into the vulgar tongue we strictly forbid [arctissime inhibe- 
mus]." 

258 



WYCL1FFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

to have made slight impression on the peoples in Eng- 
land. Their relations with the Continent were not 
close ; and thought passed slowly, in those sluggish 
times, from one state to another. But among the 
German peoples themselves, who had conquered 
Britain, there had been developed at different times a 
practical tendency toward freedom in religion, and 
especially toward a more personal and general ac- 
quaintance with the Scriptures. 

Of course their history, after settling in England, 
had been very largely one of strife. It startles us to 
remember that more than one year out of two, in the 
whole six centuries of their growing domination, had 
been occupied in struggle : against the preceding in- 
habitants of the country, among themselves, or against 
the roving tribes which had followed ; while the 
breaking in of the still pagan Danes, upon the state 
which was painfully striving toward Christian order, 
immensely retarded its moral progress. Yet the ac- 
tive and strenuous spirit of the Saxons, after they had 
accepted the Christianity which Gregory sent, by the 
Abbot Augustine and his forty monks, had never 
ceased to work toward better and larger knowledge, 
and a more secure freedom. The name " Saxon " may 
not have come, as some have derived it, from the short 
sword-axe, or " Seax," which they carried ; 1 but the 
weapon certainly well represented their self-asserting 
and resolute temper, to which war was familiar, and 
which sought utility as the prime good in instruments. 
There was nothing very fine or ethereal about them. 

1 Thierry seems to accept this : ' ' Saxons, or men with the long 
knives ; " " Sax, saex, seax, seex, knife or sword. Handsax, poniard. 
(Gloss, of Wachter)." — Nor. Conq., Vol. I, page 9. 

259 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

They were not distinguished for brightness of fancy, 
or moral delicacy, or for unusual spiritual insight. 
But they had a sense of personal right, which Avas 
vital and strong, with a certain robust practical intel- 
ligence ; while they readily received whatever forms 
of foreign culture they could assimilate. 

They had gained written codes, as one effect of 
their new religion. They had gained a force from the 
world at large, to expand and lift the insular spirit. 
Archbishop Theodore, an Asiatic Greek from Tarsus, 
in the seventh century brought to Canterbury an ex- 
traordinary library, containing Greek authors as well 
as Latin. He established important schools in the 
kingdom, and himself taught arithmetic, astronomy, 
medicine and divinity. The African Abbot, Adrian, 
who accompanied him, was of a like spirit; and in 
less than a century from the landing of the monks, 
Caedmon of "Whitby was reciting to the Abbess Hilda 
and her scholars the first English song — of Creation, 
of Judgment, and of what lies between ; Aldhelm, of 
Malmesbury, was inventing the organ, and writing 
the earliest Latin verse ; while the eloquence and the 
sanctity of Cuthbert seemed to open heaven to the 
eyes of those to whom he preached. In the following 
century Offa, the king, not only struck coins and medals, 
and built an abbey and a palace, but he framed laws 
to promote Christian morals, drew closer the relations 
of England to the Continent, and corresponded with 
Charlemagne, on matters of commerce and educa- 
tion. 

Alfred, of the ninth century, by consent of all one 
of the leading figures in history — not great in oppor- 
tunity, but great in mental and moral force — is the 

260 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

typical Saxon. He had been upon the Continent, and 
had there had experience of a higher civilization than 
existed in England. He sought to assemble learned 
men at his court, as Grimbald from St. Omer's, and 
Asser from St. David's. He learned Latin himself, in 
the intervals of a life crowded with care and thick 
with battles, that he might open its treasures to 
others. He translated from it Orosius' History, with 
additions of his own ; Gregory's treatise on the Duty 
of Pastors ; Boethius, on the Consolation of Philoso- 
phy ; the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, and parts of 
the writings of St. Augustine. He personally trans- 
lated parts of the Scripture, and was engaged at his 
death on a Saxon Psalter. Historians find a striking 
illustration of the range of his thought in the fact that 
he sent ambassadors from England to the ancient 
Christian churches in India. A clearer illustration 
appears in the fact that he founded schools at Win- 
chester and Oxford — the latter of which has not un- 
reasonably been considered the germ of the later uni- 
versity ; that he sought a higher education for girls, 
as well as for boys ; and that he expressed the kingly 
wish that all the free-born English youth should some 
time read with correctness and ease the English Scrip- 
tures. Athelstane, his grandson, was hardly behind 
him in his desire to further learning and promote 
moral welfare ; and he also pressed the translation of 
the Scriptures into the common English speech. The 
" Durham Book," of Latin gospels, with Saxon glosses 
interlined, the most beautiful example of Saxon callig- 
raphy, is perhaps of his time. 

In spite, therefore, of tides of battle ever rising and 
slowly receding, a true progress had been realized in 

261 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

England, in the direction of those attainments which 
have given to the nation its subsequent fame. Men 
for the time distinguished by their accomplishments 
began to appear. The Abbot Benedict brought costly 
books, and works of art, on his return from each of 
his journeys to Eome. - The Yenerable Bede, in the 
eighth century, found learning, teaching and writing, 
as he said, a constant delight. 2 He learned Greek, 
as well as Latin, with something of Hebrew, and 
quoted Plato and Aristotle, as well as Seneca, Cicero, 
and Yirgil. He left forty-five books to attest his 
industry, on science, philosophy, as well as theology ; 
and is said to have first introduced the use of the 
Christian era in historical writing. He drew to him- 
self six hundred scholars ; and he died, as we know, 
while engaged in translating the Gospel of John into 
the stubborn Saxon tongue. Burke calls him "the 
Father of the English learning " ; and, though denying 
him genius, credits him with "an incredible industry, 
and a generous thirst of knowledge." 3 



1 "He brought treasures back with him, chiefly books in countless 
quantities, and of every kind. He was a passionate collector, as has 
been seen, from his youth. He desired each of his monasteries to 
possess a great library, which he considered indispensable to the in- 
struction, discipline, and good organization of the community." — 
Montalembert, " Monks of the West," Vol. IV, page 443. 

2 "Cunctuni vitse tempus in ejusdem monasterii habitatione pera- 
gens, omnem meditandis Scripturis operam dedi ; atque inter obser- 
vantiam disciplinse regularis et quotidianam cantandi in ecclesia 
curam, semper aut discere, aut docere, aut scribere dulce habui." — 
See Giles' "Life of Ven. Bede," Vol I, page lii. 

3 " Abridg. Eng. Hist." Works, Vol. V, page 532. 

Sharon Turner says of Bede, somewhat extravagantly, that he " col- 
lected into one focus all that was known to the ancient world, except- 

262 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

Alcuin, who came later, the friend and instructor of 
Charlemagne, had been educated at York, where the 
library collected by Archbishop Egbert was already 
so rich that he remembered it with delight and regret 
from his more brilliant Southern home, and' longed 
that " some of its fruits might be placed, in the Para- 
dise of Tours." Dunstan, of the tenth century, 
though of a fiery arrogance of temper, supremely de- 
voted to the Papacy, was also an assiduous student, a 
designer and painter, a skilful musician, with taste in 
the arrangement of jewels and the illustration of 
books, a judge even of embroidery, and fond of rich 
architecture. The literary eminence of the Saxon 
clergy was then acknowledged by other nations. The 
schools, at York, and at Jarrow on the Tyne, were 
celebrated ; and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, of the 
time of Alfred, remains, with the exception of 
Ulphilas' translation, the most venerable monument 
of Teutonic prose. 

The general moral progress of the nation, though 
not rapid or signal, appeared thus secure. Industries 
were multiplied ; gardens and orchards began to re- 
place the forests, swamps, and pasture-lands ; articles 
of taste came to be frequent, musical instruments, 
cups of twisted glass, or of gold or silver, curiously 
wrought, which were often exported. The walls of 
churches were hung not unfrequently with pictures 
and tapestries, and silver candelabra were on the 
altars. The even-song of the monks at Ely floats to 
us over the centuries, and the Danish Canute's enjoy- 
ing the Greek mathematicians, and some of their literature and phi- 
losophy, which he had not much studied." — "Hist. Ang. Sax.," Vol. 
Ill, page 356. 

363 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

merit of it has been commemorated in lovely lines by 
a great English poet. 1 "Woman had relatively a high 
position in the Saxon communities, 2 and freedom was 
general. Kingship had been born of battle ; but the 
kings were little more than elective war chiefs, and the 
national council could depose them. Assemblies of 
freemen consulted and decided on public questions. 
County courts, which we have inherited, took cogni- 
zance of all cases, whether temporal or spiritual. 
Slavery was limited in extent, and the body of the 
people were proprietors or free laborers. Those of 
lower ranks could rise to the higher, like the great 

1 " A pleasant music floats along the Mere, 
From monks in Ely chanting service high, 
"While-as Canute, the King, is rowing by : 
* * * * * 

The Eoyal Minstrel, ere the choir is still, 

"While his free barge skims the smooth flood along, 

Gives to that rapture an accordant Ehyme. ' ' 

"Wordsworth, "Eccl. Sonnet," XXX. 
The remaining fragment of this ' ' Ehyme ' ' is said by Turner to be 
the oldest specimen left of a genuine ballad in the Anglo-Saxon lan- 
guage. — "Hist. Ang. Sax.," Vol. Ill, page 249. 

2 ' ' They were allowed to possess, to inherit, and to transmit landed 
property ; they shared in the social festivities ; they were present at 
the Witenagemot and the Shire-gemot ; they were permitted to sue 
and be sued in the courts of justice ; their persons, their safety, their 
liberty, and their property were protected by express laws. " — Sharon 
Turner, "Hist. Ang. Sax.," Vol. Ill, page 59. 

They were famous in Europe for their skill in gold embroider} 7 . 
The mother of Alfred was his earliest and best teacher. His daughter 
inherited his genius and spirit, and was the "wisest woman in Eng- 
land." It might have been said of many a Saxon woman, in refer- 
ence to the sturdy stock from which she sprang, as it was said of 
Edith, daughter of Godwin, who was singularly lovely in person and 
character, and of many accomplishments, "Sicut spina rosam, genuit 
Godwinus Editham." 

264 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

Earl Godwin. Towns and parishes were more numer- 
ous than on the Continent. Allodial properties were 
widely distributed; and the Witenageniot, or As- 
sembly of Wise Men, including king, clergy, nobles 
and gentry, held the government of the kingdom in 
its strong and liberal hand. 

In spite, therefore, of wide illiteracy, and of unre- 
fined manners, the Saxon people, at the time when 
Edward the Confessor completed his work of fifteen 
years in building Westminster Abbey, were compara- 
tively self-governed, energetic and prosperous. They 
had liberty of access, laymen as well as priests, to 
copies of the Scriptures, where these existed. The 
Gospel and the Epistle were read in English in the 
churches, and the sermon was so preached. 1 Other 
parts of the Scriptures were in their own tongue. 
iElfric, in the tenth century, had given an epitome of 
the Old and New Testaments, and had translated por- 
tions of them, besides quoting in his homilies numer- 
ous texts. The " Eush worth Gloss," like the Durham, 
gave the Latin of the gospels, with a Saxon transla- 
tion ; and still another translation of the same sacred 
records is known to have preceded the Conquest. It 
seems nearly certain that if the progress thus com- 
menced had continued unhindered, long before the 
day of Wycliffe, the Bible, in the speech of the peo- 
ple, would have been the possession and rich inherit- 
ance of our rough, but robust, aspiring and hopeful 
English ancestors. 

At this point, however, breaks in upon their history 
a fracturing force, which certainly long retarded this 
progress, and which seemed for a time wholly to for- 

iLingard, "Hist, of Eng.,» Vol. I, page 307, 
265 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

bid the final attainment. I refer, of course, to the 
Norman Conquest. 

The difference between the Saxon and the Norman 
was not one of blood, since both represented the Teu- 
tonic stock; but it was fuller of meaning and of 
menace for that very reason, because the Scandinavian 
stuff had taken in the Normans a peculiar develop- 
ment, which made them at once despise and hate their 
ancient kinsmen. Their long career as rovers of the 
seas had perfected in them the native fierceness from 
which the Saxons had been emerging into a more 
domestic habit. Settling in France, in the ninth cen- 
tury, and wresting lands and cities from its king, these 
restless pirates — whom Charlemagne, even at the height 
of his power, had seen and feared — entered into alli- 
ance with the Southern civilization, and became its 
chiefest Northern champions. Dropping their own 
religion and language, they adopted the religion, the 
language, and the manners, which preceded them in 
France. Its feudal system, in the utmost completeness, 
they joyfully accepted. Its rites of chivalry, which the 
Saxons had tardily and partially adopted, were prac- 
tised by them with eager devotion, as well as with 
prodigal splendor and pomp. They became the exult- 
ing, if not always the patient, adherents of the Papacy, 
whose far-ascending orders of rank surpassed their 
elaborate feudal distinctions, whose majestic cere- 
monial was more sumptuous and brilliant than that of 
their tournaments. And a century and a half after 
their first settlement in France, there was no province, 
from the Channel to the Gulf, more alive than was 
theirs with the spirit and forms of the peoples speaking 
the Romance tongues. The martial fire burned as ever 

266 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

in their veins ; but their constitution was feudal, their 
language French, the whole tone of their society had 
been caught from the South. 

Descendants of renowned and irresistible conquerors, 
" the silver streak " interposed but slight barrier be- 
tween this people and the fertile farms and thriving 
towns every rumor of which reexci ted .their greed. 
Their influence had been largely augmented in England 
during the reign of Edward the Confessor. It came 
to its terrific consummation when on Christmas day, 
a. D. 1066, a few weeks after the victory of Hastings, 
William of Normandy was crowned King of England, 
in that Westminster Abbey whose vast extent, massive 
pillars, and cruciform structure showed already the 
Norman impress. His conquest was not fully com- 
pleted till some years after ; but from that time the 
old order of things was practically ended, and a new 
and dreadful era began. 

The destruction of properties in the kingdom was 
enormous. The destruction of life, happiness, hope, 
not only in battle, but in the fierce outrage and rapine 
which broke as a fiery flood upon the land, is some- 
thing which cannot be pictured in speech. It is not 
wonderful that men fancied long afterward that fresh 
traces of blood appeared supernaturally on the battle- 
ground near Hastings, as if to show the writhing of 
the land in its immense anguish. In the time of 
Stephen, the Chronicle said, one might travel a day 
and not find one man living in a town, nor any land 
under cultivation. " Men said openly that Christ and 
his saints were asleep." 1 The feudal system, in all its 

\ x See Hallani, " Mid. Ages," Vol. II, page 316. 
" Between York and Durham every town stood uninhabited ; their 

267 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

rigor, took the place of the simpler Saxon institutions ; 
and it was reckoned, in the third generation after the 
Conquest, that more than eleven hundred castles had 
already been erected. The Saxon clergy, endeared to 
the people by their general steadfastness for the popu- 
lar cause, were driven with violence from their places, 
to be succeeded by Norman monks. "Wulfstan, of 
Worcester, was, after a little, the only Bishop of 
English blood left in his place. The supremacy of the 
Pontiff, who had sent to William his consecrated stand- 
ard, and who had followed his invasion with the first 
Papal legates in the island, appeared finally exalted 
above all local Episcopal rights ; and the freedom of 
the Church seemed to have fallen, with that of the 
State, in final ruin. Even venerated Saxon saints were 
displaced from the calendar, as if heaven itself were a 
wholly Norman institution. 

The language of the people was banished from the 
Court, the councils, the public records, and the North- 
ern dialect of France took its place. The native 
English were despised without measure, and despoiled 
without mercy. Many fled across the sea, into the 

streets became lurking-places for robbers and wild beasts. . . . 
Men, women, and children died of hunger ; they laid them down and 
died in the roads and in the fields, and there was no man to bury them. 
. . . Nay, there were those who did not shrink from keeping 
themselves alive on the flesh of their own kind." — Freeman, Hist. 
Nor. Conq., Vol. IV, page 293. 

" England was now a scene of general desolation, a prey to the rav- 
ages both of natives and foreigners. Fire, robbery, and daily slaughter, 
did their worst on the wretched people, who were forever attacked, 
trampled down, and crushed. . . . Ignorant upstarts, driven 
almost mad by their sudden elevation, wondered how they arrived at 
such a pitch of power, and thought that they might do whatever they 
liked. "— Orderic Vital. Eccl. Hist., B. IV, chs. iv, viii. 

268 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

service of foreign kings, or of the Greek Emperor. 
Becket — made Chancellor, and Archbishop, under 
Henry Second — was the first Englishman to rise to 
any distinguished office ; l and during the intervening 
century it seemed as if the earlier nation had been 
literally crushed, by the fierce onset of overwhelming 
power, into a helpless and hopeless subjection, from 
which there could be no release. 

It could not but be long, under, circumstances like 
these, before the tendencies, active before, had a 
chance to reappear, seeking again a freer faith, and 
wider acquaintance with the Scriptures. But these 
tendencies, like those to freedom in the State, were 
radical and perennial ; and the stubborn struggle 
through which they at last rose to supremacy makes 
the pages which record it of interest to the world. 

In spite of this tremendous overthrow, which had 
fallen like a whirlwind full of thunder and flame on 
the English people, and in spite of the organized mil- 
itary oppression under which they long suffered, many 
things remained, and after a time reasserted their 
right. The old language remained; and gradually, 
though slowly, it crowded back the Norman dialect, 
while from that it gained important additions. The 
old laws continued, among the people, and the early 
local institutions. These gradually attacked the 
fabricated strength of the feudal establishment ; and 
every prince who would win popularity found his 
readiest resource in ratifying the laws of Edward the 

1 It is extremely doubtful if Becket was of Saxon descent ; (see 
Milman, Lat. Christ., Vol. IV, pages 309-312) ; but that he was re- 
garded by the English as their representative, in a sense in which 
none of his predecessors had been, is beyond question. 

269 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

Confessor. The old life of the people remained, un- 
broken by the desolating strokes it had suffered, and 
with an unconquerable tenacity of purpose waiting its 
time to conquer its conquerors. 

Meantime, it grew evident that many things had 
come with the Conquest, to expand, enrich and lib- 
eralize this life, and to make the nation ultimately no- 
bler, in knowledge and in hope. The monastic school 
of the Bee, in Normandy, was famous throughout 
Europe, and the great archbishops, Lanfranc 1 and 
Anselm, who came thence to Canterbury, established 
schools, quickened thought, and fostered learning. 
A more uniform church-service was established in the 
kingdom, making worship more attractive with its 
statelier harmonies. 2 Our very word " Bible," as de- 
scribing the Scriptures, came with the ]STormans into 
England. New learnings were absorbed from the 
now nearer Continent. The civil and the canon law 
became the subjects of careful study. Distinguished 
scholars acquired a European fame : John of Salis- 

1 "To understand the admirable genius and erudition of Lanfranc, 
one ought to be an Herodian in grammar, an Aristotle in dialectics, a 
Tally in rhetoric, an Augustine and a Jerome, and other expositors of 
law and grace, in the sacred Scriptures. Athens itself, in its most 
flourishing state, . . . would have honored Lanfranc in every 
branch of eloquence and discipline, and would have desired to receive 
instruction from his wise maxims." — Orderic Vital., Eccl. Hist., B. 
IV, ch. vii. 

2 ' ' Hereupon Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, devised that ordinary, 
or form of service, which hereafter was observed in the whole realm. 
. . . Henceforward the most ignorant parish-priest in England, 
having no more Latin in all his treasury, yet understood the meaning 
of secundum usum Sarum, that all service must be ordered ' according 
to the course and custom of Salisbury church.' " — Fuller, Church 
Hist, of Brit., B. Ill, Sec. 1, § 23. 

270 



WYCLIFEE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

bury, with William of Malmesbury, in the twelfth 
century ; Matthew Paris, the historian, and sharp 
critic of Rome, in the thirteenth, with Roger Bacon, 
greatest of medieval philosophers, and Robert Gros- 
tete, Bishop of Lincoln, most distinguished of prel- 
ates; 1 Occam, the " invincible" and the "unique," in 
the fourteenth century, with Thomas Bradwardine, 
profound in mathematics as well as in theology. 
Churches and monasteries were built in great num- 
bers: the cathedrals of Canterbury, Durham, Roch- 
ester, Chichester, Norwich, Winchester, Gloucester, 
and others. The Norman spirit and manner of treat- 
ment gave from the first a new character to such 
buildings, which afterward flowered into delightful 
exhibition in the pointed arches or the lovely flowing 
window-tracery of later cathedrals, as Salisbury, or 
Wells, or in the Westminster chapel of St. Stephen. 
The Universities were organized at Oxford and Cam- 

1 Matthew Paris' description of him is worth quoting for its sim- 
plicity and force, and as incidentally illustrating the spirit of the 
time : 

' ' Pendant sa vie, il avait r^primande publiquement le seigneur 
pape et le roi, corrige les prelats, r6forme~ les moines, dirige les pre- 
tres, instruit les clercs, soutenu les £coliers, preche devant le peuple, 
pers^cutd les incontinents, fouill6 avec soin les divers Merits, et avait 
ete le marteau et le contempteur des Eomains. ... II avait 
gagne le respect de tous par son zele infatigable a remplir les fonctions 
pontificales. 

" Lorsqu'il mourut, a savoir la nuit ou il monta vers le Seigneur, 
Foulques, 6veque de Londres, entendit au plus haut des airs un son 
tres-doux, dont la rnelodie pouvait a juste titre r£creer et charmer les 
oreilles et le coeur de celui qui l'entendait. . . . Alors l'6veque : 
Par le foi que je dois a Saint Paul, je crois que le v6ndrable eveque de 
Lincoln, notre pere, notre frere, et notre maitre, a pass6 de ce monde, 
et est deja place dans le royaume du ciel. " — Chron. de Mat. Par. 
trad, par Huillard-Breholles, Tome VII, page 445. 

271 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

bridge, and attracted wide public attention. x An im- 
mense enthusiasm for study prevailed among the 
young. In the thirteenth century Oxford was second 
only to Paris in the number of its students. Thirty 
thousand are said to have been there at one time, to 
learn, as Hume says, "bad Latin, and worse logic," 
but to gain enlargement and vigor of thought from 
even such imperfect studies ; and it was the logic of 
Aristotle which came there, through Edmund Rich, 
afterward Archbishop. The arts of music and picto- 
rial illustration took a fresh impulse. The use of pa- 
per, instead of parchment, multiplied manuscripts. 
The first really English book, the travels of Sir John 
Mandeville, appeared in the middle of the fourteenth 
century ; and libraries then began to be gathered by 
private persons. Better than all, the Norman and the 
Saxon elements, so long exasperated into mutual hate, 
began to assimilate and to come into union, to form 
the ultimate English people ; and so the old spirit, 
which had survived Bede and Alfred, and had outlived 
the Conquest, was ready again, with larger training, 
ampler instruments, a more complete strength, to take 
up its interrupted work. 

Already, in the reign of Henry II, the Norman 
had begun to cease to be conqueror, while the Saxon 
began to rise from subjection. He " initiated," it has 
been said, " the rule of Law." Early in the thirteenth 
century Magna Charta was won, by the people as well 

1 ' ' Giraldus Carnbrensis, about 1180, seems the first unequivocal 
witness to the resort of students to Oxford, as an established seat of 
instruction. But it is certain that Vacarius read there on the civil law 
in 1149, which affords a presumption that it was already assuming the 
character of a university." — Hallam, Lit. Hist. Europe, Vol. I, page 16. 

The first charter of Oxford was granted by Henry III, A. D. 1244. 

272 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

as by barons and clergy, in the interest of all ; and 
distinctions of descent thenceforth in large measure 
disappeared. Under Henry III was added the mem- 
orable Charter of the Forest, while the Great Charter 
was solemnly reaffirmed. How frequently afterward 
it was so reaffirmed, every one knows : by the weak 
king, needing popular support; by the strong king, 
wanting money for wars. Edward III reaffirmed 
it fifteen or more times, in his single reign. Within 
two centuries after the Conquest, a. d. 1265, Parlia- 
ment included citizens and burgesses, with nobles and 
prelates. Its name was Norman, its substance Eng- 
lish. In the fourth year of Edward III it was or- 
dained that its sessions should be annual ; and it con- 
stantly insisted on conditions precedent before making 
its grants, these conditions being the enlarged and se- 
cured liberties of the realm. Under the Edwards im- 
mense progress was thus made in the law ; and the 
Royal prerogative, in spite of the glamour cast upon 
it by the later French victories, sensibly declined. 

The treatise of Glanville, the earliest probably on 
English law, had been written before ; and that of 
Bracton had followed it, under Henry III. The 
famous treatise known as " Fleta," of the reign of Ed- 
ward I, composed probably by order of the king ; 
the tract of Britton, in Norman French ; the " Mirror 
of Justice," written perhaps a little later, and probably 
by a Saxon — these show the progressive activity in 
legal discussion. Year-books, containing authentic re- 
ports of adjudged cases, preceded the reign of Edward 
II. 1 A great number of fruitful new laws came 

1 Blackstone says : ' ' The reports are extant in a regular series from 
the reign of Edward the Second, inclusive; and, from his time to that 
R 273 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

into existence under Edward III, and on points of 
capital importance. The power of the people was 
more clearly recognized. They had shown their prow- 
ess on Continental fields, and the skilled archers, to 
whose English muscle the Norman arrow had given 
a swift and terrible weapon, had won the day for belted 
knights at Crecy and at Poictiers. Even the enfran- 
chisement of the villain-class was steadily advancing ; 
and the near insurrection, headed by Wat Tyler, only 
manifested in sudden and riotous fury the spirit which 
had long preceded and impelled it. 

The English language, now enriched from the 
French, came again to its place, not among the people 
only, but at the Court. In A. D. 1258, two centuries 
after the Conquest, was first issued a royal proclama- 
tion in English. The Chancellor's speech was made in 

of Henry the Eighth, were taken by the prothonotaries or chief scribes 
of the court, at the expense of the Crown, etc. , etc. ' ' — Comment, on 
Laws of England, Cooley's edition, A. D. 1871 ; Vol. 1, page 71. 

The same statement is repeated, in substance, in Reeves' Hist, of 
Eng. Law, near the end of Chap, xn, Vol. 2, page 357 ; in "The Re- 
porters," by John William Wallace. Third Edition, Phila. , A. D. 
1855, pages 62-65 ; in Bouvier's Law Dictionary, A. D. 1870, art. 
"Year Books; " and in B. V. Abbott's Law Dictionary, A. r>. 1879. 

Five volumes of "Year Books of Edward First " have however been 
published in England, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, 
since A. r>. 1863. The learned editor and translator of these, Alfred J. 
Horwood, of the Middle Temple, does not seem confident that the re- 
ports contained in them were^prepared by any authorized officer of the 
court, though they clearly show, as he affirms, that "one reporter, and 
sometimes more than one, was a constant attendant in court. ' ' [Pref- 
ace, pages xxi, xxiii.] But the recently published reports corre- 
spond closely, in form and extent, with those found in the familiar 
Year Books ; and they at least make it evident, as the editor says, 
. ' ' that there was no attempt to conceal the proceedings of the Judges, ' ' 
certainly as early as the latter half of the reign of Edward First. 

274 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

Parliament in the same tongue, a century later, a. d. 
1363. But, a year before, it had been ordered that 
pleas in court should be pleaded and judged in English, 
though laws and records continued to be written in 
Latin or in French. This was at once a sign and a 
stimulant of the revived national spirit, which had 
come once more to animate the kingdom ; and this had 
its ultimate menace toward the Pope, as well as toward 
immediate secular oppressions. 

The exactions of the Papac}^ in the thirteenth cen- 
tury had been nearly intolerable, in spite of the fact 
that Magna Charta had interposed its shining shield 
to protect in a measure the national Church. The 
Norman work had been only too thoroughly done. 
The richest benefices were held by foreigners. One 
half of the real estate in the kingdom belonged to the 
Church. Yast sums were annually sent from it, to pass 
out of sight through the lavish treasury of Kome or 
Avignon. The finances of the Crown were embarrassed 
thereby, while the popular indignation grew vehement 
and wide. The removal of the Papal throne into 
France, early in the century, had shaken the English 
allegiance to it. The long Schism of the "West, which 
closed the century, in which England and France 
favored rival pontifical claimants, struck a heavier 
blow at the popular regard for the office itself. The 
drift of English legislation became therefore sharply 
and stubbornly adverse at least to the secular claims 
of the Pope. 

In the seventh year of Edward I, the statute of 
Mortmain limited the acquisition of properties by the 
Church. In the eighteenth year of Edward III, this 
was renewed and its execution more fully assured. In 

275 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

the twenty-fifth year of the same signal reign the 
statute of " Pro visors " forbade Papal encroachment 
on the rights of those who should present to church- 
offices ; and two years after, this was brought to a 
cutting edge by the sharp writ of " Praemunire " — a 
barbarous name for a righteous procedure — which was 
further defined and reinforced in the sixteenth year 
of Richard II, by what the Pope not unnaturally 
called " an execrable statute " : x which put out of the 
king's protection any who should procure at Rome 
translations, processes, excommunications, bulls, or 
other instruments, against the king and his dignity, 
forfeiting their goods, attaching their persons, and 
subjecting them to imprisonment at the king's pleasure. 
It was the flash of a naked blade, warning the Pope 
to keep his hands off from England ; and this same 
writ of " Praemunire " became a weapon of terrible 
effect, two centuries after, in the furious grasp of 
Henry YIII. 2 

It is apparent, then, that we at last have reached a 
point where many conditions were favorable in Eng- 
land to the revival of the earlier movement toward 
freedom in religion, and toward unhindered popular 

1 "Quamvis dudum in regno Anglise jurisdictio Romanse eoclesige, et 
libertas ecclesiastica fuerit oppressa, vigore illius execrabilis statuti, ' ' 
etc. — Letter of Martin Fifth, to the Duke of Bedford. 

2 A very ample and clear analysis of the famous statutes of " Provi- 
sors" and "Praemunire" is given in Reeves' "History of the English 
Law," Vol. II, pages 259-269. 

Fuller's comment is, as usual, quaint and vigorous : "Some former 
laws had pared the pope's nails to the quick ; but this cut off his 
fingers, in effect, so that hereafter his hands could not grasp and hold 
such vast sums of money as before." — Church Hist, of Brit., B. IV, 
Sec. 1, I 33. 

276 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

acquaintance with the books of the Scripture. Yet it 
must not fail also to be noticed that two forces were 
moving, distinctly, and with violence, in the opposite 
direction, which were in fact only deepened and made 
swifter by the general obvious progress toward free- 
dom. The one was the jealous, excited, passionate 
spirit of leading prelates, like Wykeham or Courtenay, 
whose power was still subtle and immense, and who 
were more strenuous for the spiritual place and pre- 
rogative of the Church, as they felt the State crowd- 
ing upon their secular establishment. The other — in 
some respects the more dangerous force — was the 
jealousy of landowners, as the peasants around them 
were seen to be rising toward larger liberties. 

The repeated breaking out of the plague in England, 
with its terrible ravages — cutting off, it is supposed, 
nearly half the population — had unsettled all condi- 
tions of labor, and men were lacking to do necessary 
work, while harvests rotted on the ground, and cattle 
wandered at their will. Successive statutes, beginning 
in A. d. 1349, had sought to compel the service of 
laborers, and to regulate prices ; but they constantly 
failed, for forty years, and the fear and wrath of pro- 
prietors were aroused against the turbulence re- 
excited and extended by these very laws. Any influ- 
ence which promised additional impulse to the peasant 
class must therefore encounter their fierce resistance ; 
while, as I have said, the prelates, bred in the traditions 
of Rome, were only more watchful against every 
threatened moral assault because they had to yield and 
bend to the will of Parliament concerning the enlarge- 
ment of their temporal estates. 

This was substantially the state of England in the 

277 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

middle of the fourteenth century; and it is in the 
midst of this excited, fermenting life — on the front of 
this old, yet ever-new movement, toward freedom, 
nationality, and a more intelligent popular faith — be- 
tween these sharply threatening perils — that the figure 
of John Wy cliff e confronts us. It is obvious, I think, 
that he appeared at a critical time ; that many forces 
had contributed to determine his spirit and aims, and 
to assign him his work in the world ; and that that 
work, although it came in the fulness of time, was 
one of the most difficult, as well as of the largest, yet 
entrusted to any man. I think it will appear, too, that 
he was of singular fitness for it, and did it with a 
supreme fidelity ; and that the fruit of it never has 
passed from English history. In some respects, cer- 
tainly, his is one of the most impressive of all the 
figures which his time presents. The Saxon and the 
Norman were singularly combined in the great Eng- 
lishman, at once scholar and statesman, philosopher 
and ambassador, devout recluse and determined re- 
former. And we, to-night, may well be conscious of 
real and rich indebtedness to him. 

The principal outward incidents of his life are suffi- 
ciently familiar. He was born in Yorkshire, not far 
from Richmond, famous for its noble castle, on an 
estate which had belonged to his family from the time 
of the Conquest. The earlier elements of the English 
population had continued in that district in larger 
numbers, and had clung to the old traditions of the 
kingdom with greater tenacity, than in the midland 
and southern counties, 1 though "Wy cliff e's own f amity, 

1 ' ' The Norman successors of the Bastard dwelt in full safety in the 
Southern provinces, but it was scarcely without apprehension that they 

278 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

to the end of its history, remained attached with 
peculiar zeal to the Roman Church. It seems, indeed, 
to have carefully covered the natural traces of his 
inheritance in it, to whose fame alone it owes remem- 
brance. 

In the year 1324, according to the common state- 
ment, or, more probably, a little earlier, the boy John 
was here born. Of his instruction in childhood, we 
have no special knowledge, as indeed he has told us 
almost nothing of his life, at any point, being too 
great for egotism, and too much engrossed with public 
work to perpetuate the incidents of his personal his- 
tory ; but probably about the year 1335, he went to 
Oxford, and entered one of the five colleges then there 
existing — either Merton or, as seems more probable, 
Balliol, with which he was certainly afterward con- 
nected, and which had been founded by a family 
whose estates lay near his home. He was at the uni- 
versity a " Borealis," 'or member of the northern 
" nation," which had its own proctor, and which rep- 
resented whatever was freest in the spirit of the 
place ; and the whole university — which was then 
simply a vast public school — constituted a democratic 
cosmopolitan society, in which knowledge gave lead- 
ership, and in which the scholars of different countries 
were equally at home. Richard of Armagh, not yet 
archbishop, was in Oxford at the time, of whom 
ISTeander speaks as "a forerunner of Wycliffe, by his 

journeyed beyond the Humber ; and a historian of the twelfth century 
[William of Malmesbury] tells us that they never visited that part of 
their kingdom without an army of veteran soldiers. It was in the 
North that the tendency to rebel against the social order established by 
the Conquest longest endured." — Thierry, "Nor. Conq.," Vol. I, 
page 294. 

279 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

freedom of thought ; " 1 and Thomas Bradwardine had 
recently been there, who anticipated Edwards in his 
doctrine of the will, and whose vigor of character 
made all his speculation energetic and impressive. 
How far the young student was in contact with such 
teachers cannot be affirmed; but doubtless the fine 
and fervid spirit which emanated from them affected 
all minds as responsive as his, and all hearts as deeply 
touched with a sense of religion. 

He became, of course, familiar with Latin, as then 
used among scholars, but not with Greek, which was 
not yet at home in Oxford; and the liberal arts, 
grammar, rhetoric, and logic — the " Trivium," — arith- 
metic, astronomy, geometry, and music — the " Quad- 
rivium," — we know that he successfully pursued. The 
physical and mathematical studies, indeed, appear to 
have had for him quite as strong an attraction as the 
logical and speculative. He passed from them all to 
the study of Theology, including the interpretation of 
the Old and New Testaments, as found in the Vul- 
gate, the reading of the Fathers, and of the Scholastic 
Doctors, with the study of the canon law. That he 
studied also the civil law, then or afterward, is equally 
certain, with the history and the canonical law of his own 
kingdom. And these were to bear large fruit in his life. 

In such pursuits probably ten years were occupied, 
and by A. d. 1345, or thereabouts — the year before 
Crecy, four years after Petrarch had been crowned at 
the Capitol — he was fitted for larger university work, 
as a teacher and a Master. It is not necessary to fol- 
low his course for the twenty years afterward, which 
were years with him of silent growth, in preparation 

1 Hist, of Church, Vol. V, page 134. 

280 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

for a service which he could then have scarcely ex- 
pected. After A. d. 135T he was for some time a Fel- 
low of Merton College; in a. d. 1361 he was Master 
of Balliol ; and the same year he was nominated by 
his college Rector of Fylingham, a Lincolnshire par- 
ish, which allowed him to continue in connection with 
Oxford. For a short time he was Warden of Canter- 
bury Hall, appointed by the Archbishop, its founder, 
on account of his excellences of learning and of life, 1 
but soon removed by the successor of the prelate ; and 
in a. d. 1366 he first appeared upon the stage of na- 
tional affairs, and began to gather that broader bright- 
ness about his name which was finally to become a 
shining and enduring splendor. To understand his at- 
titude and course, at that time and after, we must re- 
call their particular and controlling public conditions. 
In the year before, 1365, Urban Y had made 
claim upon Edward for the payment of a thousand 
marks, as the annual feudal tribute promised by John 
to Innocent III for the kingship of England, and 
also for payment of large arrears due on such tribute. 
Edward, in whose reign it had never been paid, re- 
ferred this to Parliament ; and that body was assem- 
bled in the following May. Its prompt and emphatic 
decision was, that such a tribute should not be paid ; 
that John had had no right to pledge it, and had vio- 
lated his oath of Coronation in the act ; and that, if 
the Pope should prosecute the claim, the whole power 

1 " Ad vitse tnse et conversationis laudabilis honestatem, literarum- 
que scientiam, qui bus personam tuam in artibus magistratum altissi- 
mus insignivit, mentis nostrae oculos dirigentes, ac de tuis fidelitate, 
circumspectione, et industria plurimum confidentes," etc. — Quoted by 
Vaugban, "Life of Wyoliffe," Vol. I, page 417. 

281 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

of the kingdom should be set to resist him. This de- 
fiant decision was sufficient for its purpose, and the 
claim was never again presented. From that time on, 
England stood free from any pretense of vassalage 
toward the Pope, and had its path more clear than be- 
fore to future freedoms. 

It is probable that "Wycliffe was a member of this 
Parliament, representing the clergy, or summoned by 
the king. 1 He was, at all events, so prominent an ad- 
vocate of its decision, that a champion of the Papacy 
made upon him a vehement assault, in reply to which 
he gives the reasons urged in Parliament, by temporal 
lords, against such a tribute. Prom these he con- 
cludes that the treaty of John had been invalid and 
immoral ; and he so presents the reasons for this as to 
show his profound sympathy with them, if he had not 
himself suggested and shaped them. He calls .him- 
self, at the outset of his tract, " an obedient son of 
the Church of Pome ; " and such, no doubt, he then 
felt himself to be. But the vivid spirit of nationality 
and of liberty which appears in the tract, with the 
habit of referring to permanent equities as properly 
controlling in public affairs, was prophetic of much ; 
and the instinct of the Papacy must already have felt 
in him its future effective and intrepid assailant. He 
was, at this time, you observe, perhaps forty-five years 
of age, a distinguished scholar, according to the best 
standard of the time, famous as a philosopher, an in- 

1 The facts which make this probable are clearly and largely stated 
by Lechler ["John Wiclif," etc., Vol. I, pages 200-214], and the 
subsequent increasing influence of the Keformer, with the Court, and 
in the country, seems naturally to start from such an early position of 
special public trust and prominence. 

282 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

fluential churchman, prominently connected with the 
leading university. Now that his spirit was clearly 
declared, equally fearless, searching and sagacious, 
now that the expert and practised logician had shown 
himself also skilled in affairs, it might justly be ex- 
pected that his work would widen, and his influence 
become a large and beneficent national force. 

Academical and royal distinctions soon came to 
him, as he was made Doctor in the faculty of The- 
ology, and, perhaps, royal chaplain; and in A. D. 1374 
he was appointed by the king a member of the com- 
mission sent to treat with a Papal embassy, at the 
city of Bruges, on matters of grave and long dispute. 
His name stands second on this commission, follow- 
ing that of the Bishop of Bangor ; and the members 
were empowered to conclude a just compact on the 
matters in question ' with the Papal nuncios. The 
commission was associated with a large and brilliant 
civil embassy, at the head of which was the Prince's 
brother, the Duke of Lancaster, with the Earl of 
Salisbury and the Bishop of London. 

Then, probably for the first time, "Wycliffe saw a 
foreign city, and one which presented as striking a 
contrast to anything in England as did perhaps any 
town on the Continent. The busy, wealthy, populous 
Bruges was then at the height of its middle-age fame : 
with the picturesque building just erected, whose 
belfry-chimes still ring in the square, and are echoed 
in poetry, with twenty ministers of foreign kingdoms 
having hotels within the walls, and with companies of 
merchants there established from all parts of Europe ; 
while, at the time of Wy cliff e's visit, were gathered 
there also royal princes and nobles of France, with 

283 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

prelates from Italy, Germany and Spain. Wycliffe 
was brought there into closer relations with John of 
Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, whose friendship was 
afterward important to him ; and it well may be that 
a fresh impression of the lovely and austere majesty 
of the Gospel, and of the simplicity of that earlier 
development of Christianity in the world with which 
his studies had made him familiar, came upon his 
spirit, while he saw, as in microcosmic view, the os- 
tentation and pride, the practical unbelief, and the 
hardly veiled license, which were the abounding fruit 
in Europe of undisputed Pontifical rule. One cannot 
but think that many convictions, which were govern- 
ing with him in subsequent life, took emphasis if not 
origin from his brief residence in the gay and luxuri- 
ous Flemish town. 

The general result of the labors of the commission 
was not of importance. Some of its members were 
soon promoted by the Pope, and it is not perhaps a 
violent inference that they had been acting from the 
first in his interest. Wycliffe certainly was not pro- 
moted, save as he was lifted to fresh prominence and 
influence by the sharp prelatical attacks made upon 
him ; and this may warrant us in presuming that he 
had been faithful to king and realm, in the exciting 
scenes and service. In A. d. 1374 he was made by 
the king Kector of Lutterworth, with which his name 
was ever after to be connected ; and, as I have said, 
the steadfast stuff of which he was made, his ability, 
energy, and loyalty to freedom, were soon further 
tested in public affairs. 

In A. d. 1376 the Parliament, afterward known as 
" the good Parliament," was assembled, before which 

284 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

came the complaints of the kingdom against the 
Papacy, and by which these complaints were presented 
to the king. The continued intrusion of foreign 
clergy into English church-livings, the scandalous 
character of many who bought these from Papal 
brokers, the decay of religion consequent upon it, 
with the pecuniary exhaustion of the kingdom by the 
sums drained from it to be spent in dissolute pleasures 
abroad — these were some of the vehement complaints ; 
and the fact that in England was a Papal collector, 
gathering tribute to be sent to the Pope, and claiming 
the first-fruits of church-livings, was specialty pre- 
sented, with sharp remonstrance. It is probable that 
"Wycliffe was a member of this parliament, and that 
its complaints were shaped by his hand. The very 
language in which they are framed seems marked 
with his idiom, and the relation suggested between 
moral disorder and the physical calamities which 
troubled the realm, is exactly in his spirit. 

In the following year, 1377, he attacked Gamier, 
the Papal collector, with indignant intensity, and, 
passing beyond the subordinate agents, with profound 
moral earnestness he challenged the system which 
made them possible. He came thus at last into that 
personal grapple with the Pontiff which might from 
the first have been foreseen : maintaining that he can 
sin ; that what he does is by no means right because 
he does it ; that he is bound to be preeminent in fol- 
lowing Christ, in humility, meekness and brotherly 
love ; implying, plainly, that otherwise he is no Pope 
at all. The crowning doctrine here appears that 
Holy Scripture is for the Christian the rule and 
standard of the truth, and that what conflicts with 

285 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

it has no authority. He is steadily advancing on the 
path of the principles to which study, reflection, pub- 
lic service have brought him, without looking back. 
He has won, already, a high place in England, and 
he uses his power for freedom and truth with an un- 
reserved outlay of strength which recalls the Saxon 
times and blood. It will evidently not do to leave 
him alone. At this point, therefore, breaks upon him 
the first onset of that Papal assault which was never 
afterward to cease to pursue him till his books had 
been prohibited and his bones had been burned. 

In February, A. D. 1377, he was summoned to ap- 
pear before the Convocation, obviously on account of 
the stand which he had taken against prelatical and 
Papal aggression. "When the Convocation assembled 
at St. Paul's, the Duke of Lancaster, and Percy, the 
Grand Marshal of England, with armed retainers, ap- 
peared with him, as friends and defenders ; together 
with several personal friends, and some theologians 
who had come as his advocates. An altercation in- 
stantly arose, between the Marshal, with the Duke, on 
the one hand, and the imperious Bishop of London ; 
the result of which was that Wycliffe was withdrawn 
from the tribunal without having had occasion to open 
his lips. Whatever purpose had been cherished 
against him, for the time at least had utterly failed, 
and he went out as free as before. Immediately, how- 
ever, the English bishops, or some of them, collected 
propositions affirmed to be his, forwarded them to 
Eome, and sought the Papal interposition. Of the 
nineteen propositions so presented, five referred to 
legal matters, as the rights of property and inherit- 
ance ; four concerned the right of rulers to withdraw 

286 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

from the Church its temporal endowments, if these 
should be abused ; nine related to the power of church 
discipline, with its necessary limits ; and the closing 
one maintained that the Pontiff himself, being in 
error, may be challenged by laymen, and overruled. 
The "power of the keys," according to this clear- 
sighted witness, is only effective when used under the 
law of the Gospel ; and no man can really be excom- 
municated unless by himself— unless, that is, he has 
given for it sufficient occasion. 

On the basis of these articles Gregory XI, in May, 
A. d. 1377, issued five bulls against their author. 
Three of them were addressed to the Archbishop, with 
the Bishop of London, commanding them to ascertain 
if such propositions had been in fact affirmed by Wyc- 
liffe, in " a detestable insanity," and if so, to imprison 
him until further instructions ; commanding them also 
to cite him publicly, lest he should seek to escape by 
flight ; and requiring them to bring the obnoxious ar- 
ticles to the notice of the king. Another bull was ad- 
dressed to the king, informing him of the commission, 
and requiring his aid ; and still another to the Chan- 
cellor and University of Oxford, enjoining them, on 
pain of loss of all their privileges, to commit Wycliffe 
and his disciples to custody, and deliver them to the 
authorized commission. 

The death of Edward III, with the accession of 
Eichard II, which presently occurred, and the spirit 
opposed to the Papal court which appeared vividly 
in the following Parliament, made it expedient 
to delay taking action under these instruments ; and it 
was not until the end of the year, after Parliament 
was prorogued, that proceedings commenced. Mean- 

287 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

time, Wycliffe had drawn up an opinion, for the king 
and council, on the right of the kingdom to restrain its 
treasure from being carried to foreign parts, in defi- 
ance of Papal censure. With utmost emphasis he, of 
course, affirms this right : on the several grounds of 
the law of nature, the law of the Gospel, the law of 
conscience ; and it is not likely that this opinion ren- 
dered any less fierce the hostility to him which was 
already intense at Eome. 

A week before Christmas, the bull addressed to the 
university was sent to the Chancellor, with the demand 
that he ascertain if Wycliffe had propounded the al- 
leged theses, and if so, to cite him to appear in Lon- 
don before the commission. The marked difference 

f 

between this mandate and the sharper terms of the 
Papal bull shows a doubt of the temper which might 
prevail in the university, with a fear of probable pop- 
ular sympathy with the accused. The heads of the 
university seem to have taken no action whatever on 
the Papal bull, but to have so far responded to the 
commission as to serve upon Wycliffe the required cita- 
tion. Early, therefore, in a. d. 1378, the vigorous and 
undaunted theologian appeared before the archbishop 
and bishop, and made written answer for the theses. 
But he did not come in his own strength alone. He 
was now recognized as the faithful representative of a 
wide English feeling. The widow of the Black Prince, 
now Queen-Mother, sent an officer to the commission, 
charging the prelates to pronounce on him no sen- 
tence. The people of London forced their way into 
Lambeth Chapel, and showed their purpose to defend 
him. The result of the proceeding bore, therefore, no 
proportion to its threatening commencement; for, 

288 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

though he was forbidden to teach the specified theses — 
on the ground that they would give offense to the 
laity — he left the court, for the open air of streets and 
fields, with his freedom unfettered, with his promi- 
nence and power only increased, by the futile assault. 
The successive attacks of those who hated him had 
given him a distinction which he never seems to have 
sought for himself. 

At just this time began that long "Western Schism, 
in which Urban YI was acknowledged by England, 
Clement YII by France ; in which, subsequently, 
there were three Pop.es at once, almost equally detest- 
able, with equal violence anathematizing each other ; 
and which was not closed till thirty years after Wyc- 
liffe's death. An immense impression was made upon 
him by this event ; and from that time, not ceasing to 
be a diligent scholar, a patriotic counselor, a devout 
theologian, he more and more came to the front as a 
radical and devoted Church reformer. The thin, tall 
figure, the sharply-cut features, the penetrating eye, 
the firm-set lips and flowing beard, which his portraits 
present, the thoughtful, earnest, dignified presence, of 
which all men took note, were thenceforth to be found 
in the perilous van of the long English battle for a 
liberated Church and a Scriptural faith. 

In this supreme period of his life, a marked and even 
a rapid progress is to be observed in his judgments of 
truth, leading him toward, if not wholly to, the ulti- 
mate ground of the Protestant Eeformation. The 
Lutheran doctrine of Justification by faith alone, he 
never reached ; * but his mind detached itself rapidly 

1 " Turning now to the other side of faith, Wiclif evidently assumes 
that the kernel of faith is a state of feeling, a moral activity, when, in 

s 289 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

and surely from many entangling previous opinions ; 
it sought for truth on every side, with eager care 
and fruitful fervor ; and as fast as he reached any 
certain conclusion he flung the most strenuous 
energy of his soul into the work of conveying it to 
others. His time was short ; his work was noble and 
prolific. 

A skilful, acute and practised logician, a realist in 
philosophy, yet a theologian largely made by the heart, 
he took Reason and Authority as the sources of all re- 
ligious knowledge : " Reason " representing the intui- 
tive and instructive mind and conscience ; " Authority " 
representing the Divine Scripture. To the claim of 
the latter on human submission he admits no limit. It 
is superior to all traditions and decrees ; the funda- 
mental charter and law of the Church. It is a book 
for every man ; to be interpreted by the Christian for 
himself, with prayerfulness and humility, with a rea- 
sonable regard for the general Christian judgment of 
its contents, and especially for that of the great 
Church-Fathers, but with an implicit personal reliance 
on the present aid of the Holy Ghost to make evident 
its meaning, as Christ had opened it to his disciples. 
He was himself a profound and constant student of 
the Scriptures, quoting from them freely, showing 
comparison of part with part, and so saturating his 

accord with the theology of his age, and agreeably to Aristotelian 
metaphysics, he lays particular stress upon the fides formata, and de- 
fines faith to be a steadfast cleaving to God or to Christ in love ( per 
amor em caritatis perpetuo adhssrerc). . . . For this reason, we 
can hardly expect beforehand to find Wiclif doing homage to the Paul- 
ine Keformation-truth of the justification of the sinner by faith alone." 
— Lechler, ''John Wiclif," etc., Vol. II, page 79. 

290 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

mind with even their language that the Biblical phrase 
clings to his pen when it is set in freest motion. He 
sought always the spiritual sense, yet for that very 
reason was attentive to minute particulars of expres- 
sion, and to the thought suggested by these in the 
highest moods of feeling. He found the very life of 
his spirit in the Word, and more and more, to the end 
of his career, engaged his sou] in the study and the love 
of what he declares the most true, faultless, perfect and 
holy Law of God. 

In the doctrine derived by him from the Scriptures 
he was substantially Augustinian, though of unfet- 
tered thought, and differing at some points from the 
illustrious Nuniidian. The Law of God is to him the 
basis and the measure of all dominion, in the State 
and in the Church ; and in Redemption is the key to 
Creation. Salvation is of grace alone, not merited by 
good works, and the Lord Jesus Christ is its only 
Mediator. He is divine in nature and work, yet also 
the center and head of Humanity, set forth as such 
with manifold fulness ; and the dignity of man's na- 
ture, with the realness and the reach Of his moral 
responsibility, appears from the fact that a Being so 
august has intervened to redeem him. 1 Of the Virgin 
Mary the utmost which he affirms, in later years, is 
that she was probably sinless, but that it is folly to 
contend on the question, since belief in her sinlessness 
is nowise essential to salvation. Toward homage to 

1 "It was the worth of human nature, as arising from these facts 
[that God had made man in his likeness, and that Christ had died to 
save him 'unto the bliss of Heaven'] which rendered Wy cliff e so 
much the foe of war, and so much devoted to the religious welfare of 
men."— Vaughan, " Life of Wycliffe," Vol. I, page 328, 

291 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

images, and prayers to the saints, he became pro- 
nounced in his antagonism, discerning the danger of 
idolatry to the image, and holding any devotion to a 
saint only of value as it may nourish piety to the 
Lord. He did. not indiscriminately recognize saints — 
denying vehemently the power of the Church to can- 
onize many concerning whose holiness she could not 
have been certain. He held the doctrine of the 
Church Invisible — the body of the Elect — in which 
the impure can have no place, however distinguished 
in prelatical rank, they belonging to the " Church of 
the Malignants " ; and in this true Church the priest- 
hood is common to believers, and every priest set 
apart to the office has right to administer all the sac- 
raments. The celibacy of the clergy — -though it was 
his own rule — he indignantly denounced, when im- 
posed upon others, as " unscriptural, hypocritical, and 
morally pernicious " ; and if, as he conceives to be 
possible, all church-officials should give themselves to 
evil ways, the laity would compose the Church, and 
must displace and judge their rulers. 

Of only two sacraments does he treat, Baptism and 
the Supper ; and against the doctrine of transubstan- 
tiation he flung his whole force, in reverberating as- 
sault. Till a. d. 13Y8 he had received it, as tradition- 
ally taught. An interval of questioning evidently 
followed. "With all his power, in utmost energy of 
speech and spirit, after a. d. 1381 he repels and 
denounces it : as contrary to God's Word ; contrary to 
the early tradition of the Church ; as pregnant with 
all evil effects ; the most dangerous of heresies ever 
" smuggled into the Church by cunning hypocrites." 1 

1 Lechler, " John Wiclif," etc., Vol. II, pages 177-184. 
292 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

He held in substance, from that time, the Lutheran 
doctrine of the eucharist : no local corporeal presence 
of Christ in the consecrated wafer, but a spiritual 
presence, to be spiritually discerned. Yet, though the 
glorified body is in heaven, and is not re-created by 
any priest, or bruised by the teeth of any recipient, l 
there is a certain energy from it in the elements, as 
there is a certain presence of the soul in all parts of 
the body ; and the believing communicant is the one 
for whom this has its efficacy. He finds no warrant 
for any sacrament except in express words of the 
Scripture ; and the preaching of that is to him a true 
sacrament. 

Yery briefly, and of course imperfectly stated, this 
is substantially the doctrinal system held by Wy cliff e, 
in his mature and final thought ; and when we recall 
his resolute spirit, his fervent zeal and sovereign cour- 
age, with his deep sense of the calamities of the time, 
and his hope for the final reformation of Christendom, 
we easily see how inevitably he stood, by reason of it, 
toward the Papacy, as an enemy, definite and unspar- 
ing ; toward the Scriptures, as counting no labor too 
great, and no sacrifice too costly, for their widest 
distribution. 

In his relation to the Papacy three stages are ap- 
parent. Till a.d. 1378 he had recognized the primacy 
of the Bishop of Rome, while holding him by no means 
infallible, or possessed of plenary spiritual power, and 

1 As Eaymond Lull expressed it : " Fuit unquam ullum mirabile 
vel ulla humilitas, quae cum ipso possit comparari, . . . quod 
tuum corpus adeo nobile se permittat manducari et tractari ab homine 
peccatore misero"? — See Neander, "Hist. Church," Vol. IV, page 
336 (note). 

293 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

sharply rejecting his right to intermeddle with state 
legislation. From that time till a. d. 1381 he less and 
less esteemed the Papacy, as having any divine au- 
thority, and came to think it desirable for the Church 
to dispense with both Popes, then clamoring for alle- 
giance. And from A. D. 1381 to the day of his death, 
the Pope was to him the veritable Antichrist ; the 
pontifical claims were flatly blasphemous ; the Papal 
office had been a device of the Adversary of souls, and 
the homage paid to it was detestable idolatry. No 
words of the Reformers of the sixteenth century were 
ever more sweeping in severity toward the Papacy 
than were the words of this churchman of England, 
this eminent leader in its foremost university, five 
hundred years since ; and all men might be sure that 
if ever a Pope should get opportunity, the sword or 
the flame would have one swift victim ! 

In connection with this assault on the Papacy he 
came to conflict with the Mendicant Orders, to attack 
whom at that time was to make the kingdom bristle 
with enemies. He had had with them mainly pleasant 
relations till A. D. 1378, and had rather exempted 
them from the fiery censures which he even then 
visited on the secular clergy; but from that time, 
especially after A. D. 1381, as his opposition to tran- 
substantiation became more vehement, and his temper 
toward the Pope took on its intensity, he opened a 
combat with these Orders which only grew in its un- 
sparing energy till his death. The absolution against 
which he revolted had in them its ubiquitous messen- 
gers ; and he smote at them, as well as it, with sen- 
tences that cut like the blows of a blade. It was a 
combat from which they never fully recovered, and 

294 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

which their subsequent defenders and apologists have 
never forgiven. 1 

This was the necessary destructive side of his im- 
mense and incessant activity, after his work had fully 
opened. But the positive side, which gave to his 
efforts enduring and upbuilding power, was in the new 
teaching of Scriptural truth, and especially in that 
circulation of the Bible to which his whole character, 
all the aims of his life, and all his convictions, with a 
necessary force, inspired and impelled him. It is by 
this that he rises to real preeminence in his times ; 
that he suddenly consummates, in a supreme action, 
the long preceding tendencies of history ; that he 
hurled at the vast religious imperialism then domina- 
ting Europe the one weapon which it could not with- 
stand ; that he shot forth a force still felt in our age, 
and which will not cease to extend itself in the world 
till the history of that has reached its conclusion, amid 
the ultimate prophesied brightness. It was his princi- 
pal earthly work ; and it gives him his final and grand 
renown. 

I have spoken already of his fine and large acquaint- 
ance with the Scriptures, and of his profound spiritual 
sense of their majestic and tender meaning. It was 
always observed of him as a preacher that his discourse 
was rooted in the Bible ; that while others preached 

1 The full discussion by Lecbler of the date of Wycliffe's controversy 
with the Mendicant Orders — usually assigned to A. d. 1360 — justifies 
his declaration that "there is no truth in the tradition that Wiclif, 
from the very first, was in conflict especially with the Mendicant 
Orders. . . . But from the year 1381 ... he opened a con- 
flict with the Mendicant Monks, which went on from that time till 
his death with ever-increasing violence." — "John Wiclif," etc., Vol. 
II, pages 140-146. 

290 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

" chronicles of the world, and stories from the battle 
of Troy," he clung to the Scripture, and derived from 
that his illuminating lessons. " The highest service 
that man may attain to on earth," he says, "is to 
preach God's Word." " O marvelous power of the 
divine Seed," he says again, "which overpowers the 
strong man armed, softens obdurate hearts, and 
changes into divine men those who were brutalized 
in sin, and removed to an infinite distance from God." 
He insisted on simplicity, clearness, energy, in de- 
veloping and applying the message of the Word ; on 
devout feeling in the ministry of it, since, "if the 
soul be not in tune with the words, how can the 
words have power ? " But ever it is the "Word itself 
which is to him "the Life-seed, begetting regenera- 
tion and spiritual life ; " and in all proclamation of the 
Gospel the aim must be so to flash its light on the 
spirit as to bend the will to its obedience. 

Chaucer's picture of the good country priest, which 
has often been conceived to portray Wycliffe, repre- 
sents him as diligent and benign, rich in holy thought 
and work, who has caught the words of life from 
the Gospel. 1 Whether or not the poet thought of this 

1 " A good man was ther of religioun, 

And was a pore Persoun of a town ; 

But riche he was of holy thought and werk. 

He was also a lerned man ; a clerk 

That Cristes gospel gladly wolde preehe ; 

His parischens devoutly wolde he teche. 

Benigne he was, and wondur diligent, 

And in adversite ful paeient. 
* * -x- * 

"This noble ensample unto his scheep he yaf, 

That ferst he wroughte, and after that he taughte, 

Out of the gospel he tho wordes caughte, 

296 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

special preacher, he has aptly described him. He 
had seen the Lord ; and the words which he had 
heard from divine lips were law and life to his en- 
thusiastic and resolute spirit. He would make them 
the power of God to others. So he sent forth his 
itinerant preachers, without shoes, in unbleached rus- 
set, to traverse the kingdom, and to make these words 
familiar in it. Probably these went out from Oxford 
as early as A. D. 1378 — many of them with no clerical 
ordination, " Evangelical men," colporteurs we should 
say ; with God's Law for their theme, their manner 
of preaching plain and simple, their contact with the 
people constantly close. He who sent them was an- 
ticipating Wesley, in the means which he used to 
evangelize England. He was multiplying his voice a 
hundredfold, and planting his convictions, with an 
instant success, in multitudes of minds. 

But now, as the greatest of all instruments for this 
supreme work, he would have God's Word itself 
translated into the common tongue of the people, 
and reproduced in manifold copies, till the peasant 
might have it, while the rich should gain through it 
a rarer treasure than jewels of price. This was not a 
mere measure of policy, for promoting a cause. It 
was the fruit of a Christian instinct, as deep in his 
soul as life itself. He had felt the inexpressible 
power of the Scripture, to uplift and expand, to cheer 
***** 

"A bettre preest I trow ther nowher non is, 
He waytud after no pompe ne reverence, 
Ne maked him a spiced conscience, 
But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, 
He taught, and ferst he folwed it himselve." 

— Prol. to Cant. Tales, Aid. Ed., Vol. II, page 16. 
297 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

and inspire the human spirit. He had felt, as pro- 
foundly as had Bernard, the overwhelming sense of 
the awfulness of life in its relation to unseen eterni- 
ties, and the supreme ministry of the gospel to this. 
It was thus an impulse irresistible within him to make 
the message which had come from the Most High 
accessible to all, till precept and promise, prophecy 
and truth, should be to men a presence as familiar as 
the sunshine in which they had their physical image. 
So he gave to his country the first English Bible, 1 to 
be multiplied only in manuscript copies, to be read, 
perhaps, only by stealth, but to be thenceforth the 
possession of England, and to put an influence into 
its life, and into the life which has subsequently 
flowed from it, across either hemisphere, which can- 
not be outlined in any discourse, or measured in 
thought. It was not only the greatest work at- 
tempted in the age, and in its effect the most benefi- 
cent ; it was one of the most fundamental and 
momentous done in the world since the day when 
Paul took up his illustrious mission to the Gentiles. 

Of the parts of the Bible known to the Saxons, I 
have previously spoken. It needs only to be added 
that the " Ormulum," so called, a paraphrase in verse 
of the Gospels and Acts, had been made in the thir- 
teenth century, which seems, however, to have been 
confined to a single copy ; that in the fourteenth 

1 Sir Thomas More claimed, to have seen copies of an English Bible 
earlier than Wycliffe's. He doubtless mistook, for such, copies of 
Wycliffe's first translation, before the revision. No trace remains of 
any complete version earlier than that ; and those who suffered on 
account of that never justified themselves for having it by appealing to 
the existence of one preceding it. — See Ed. of Wycliffe's Bible, by 
Forshall and Madden, Preface, page xxi (note). 

39S 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

century two translations of the Psalms had been made, 
and that these were followed, after a time, by one of 
the Epistles of Paul. But up to a. d. 1360 the Psalter 
was the only book of the Bible rendered into the 
common speech ; and copies of this were certainly very 
rare. "Within the next quarter of a century there 
came into the English language the entire Bible ; and 
it came, by the witness of both adversaries and friends, 
through the impulse and the labor of the great " Re- 
former before the Reformation." How far he him- 
self translated its books is not wholly certain. That 
he did so largely, is undisputed. A Harmony of the 
Gospels, first translated, seems to have led the way to 
the rest. The Apocalypse, with its incessant attrac- 
tion for spirits like his, in times like those, was prob- 
ably among the first of the books to engage his hand. 
Others followed : most of the New Testament being 
rendered by himself, doubtless with partial aid from 
friends, the Old Testament, probably, in good part, by 
Nicholas Hereford, an intimate friend and colaborer 
with him. Hereford, however, seems to have been 
suddenly arrested in the work, and the rest to have 
been done by another, probably by "Wycliffe. 

Of course, all the translation had to be made from 
the Latin of Jerome, the Hebrew and Greek being al- 
most unknown. It was, in other words, the version 
of a version, and so exposed to peculiar imperfection. 
But it must be remembered that Jerome had had early 
Greek manuscripts, earlier than any known until 
recently to the scholars of Europe, and that so in 
translating him Wycliffe stood at but one remove 
from the originals, while his perfect acquaintance 
with the Latin gave him ample opportunity to make 

299 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

his translation energetic and full as an English equiv- 
alent. He completed it probably as early, at the 
latest, as a. d. 1382 ; and copies of it were rapidly 
made, by the hands of skilled and eager scribes. But 
Wycliffe himself no doubt was aware that the work 
had been too rapidly done for its highest value or 
best effect, and planned the revision, at once com- 
menced, Avhich finally appeared from the hand of John 
Purvey, in a. d. 1388, or four years after the master's 
death. Of this, more than a hundred and fifty manu- 
scripts still remain, in whole or in part ; many writ- 
ten on vellum, with elaborate care, to be the pos- 
session of churches, or of the wealthy, and not a few 
bearing the marks of long use, and of the concealment 
into which they were hurried in times of trouble. 1 
All these were written, probably, within forty years 
after Wycliff e's death ; and if we remember what de- 
structive search for them was made in the day of 
persecution, how many went across the sea, how many 
shriveled in the fires of war, how many were burned, 
with those who had read them, in public squares, 
how many may yet wait to be discovered, we shall see 
how extraordinary their number at first must have 

'In the "List of Manuscripts" prefixed by Forshall and Madden 
to their edition, one copy is described as " in an upright, large char- 
acter, written with great care and neatness, about 1400 " : another, as 
having ' ' initials to the books, in gold, upon coloured grounds, and to 
the chapters blue, flourished with red " : another, with initials to the 
books "in colors and gold, branching into well-executed borders," 
etc. : one, as bound "in black silk, with silver clasps of the XVth 
century ' ' : another, ' ' in green velvet, with brass bosses and clasps ' ' : 
one, as "much stained in parts " : another, as having "suffered from 
damp" : another, as "in parts much mutilated, torn, and soiled." 
Pages xxxix-lxiv. 

300 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

been. Only a spirit intense and determined could 
have driven so swiftly so many pens. 1 

Of the effect of this translation on the English 
language many have written. The judgment of Lechler 
is undoubtedly just, that " it marks an epoch in the 
development of the English language, almost as much 
as Luther's translation does in the history of the Ger- 
man tongues. The Luther Bible opens the period of 
the new High German. Wycliffe's Bible stands at the 
head of the Middle English." 2 The most recent his- 
torian of the English people speaks of him as the 
" Father of our later English prose." 3 Forms of 
expression still familiar in our version come directly 
from his : as the beam and the mote, the trampling of 
swine and the rending of dogs, the Comforter for the 
Paraclete, the Saxon exclamation " God forbid ! " Mr. 

1 Westcott speaks of ' ' about one hundred and seventy copies of the 
whole, or part, of the Wycliffite versions which have been examined " 
— thirty, or more, of the first translation, the rest of Purvey's revision. 
He adds the interesting fact that ' ' nearly half the copies are of a small 
size, such as could be made the constant daily companions of their 
owners." — "Hist. Eng. Bible," page 24. 

2 "John Wiclif," etc., Vol. I, page 347. 

3 " If Chaucer is the father of our later English poetry, Wyclif is the 
father of our later English prose. The rough, clear, homely English of 
his tracts^ the speech of the ploughman and the trader of the day, 
though colored with the picturesque phraseology of the Bible, is, in its 
literary use, as distinctly a creation of his own as the style in which he 
embodied it, the terse vehement sentences, the stinging sarcasms, the 
hard antitheses which roused the dullest mind like a whip." — Green's 
"Hist, of Eng. People," Vol. I, page 489. 

"The vocabulary of the reformers . . . is drawn almost wholly 
from homely Anglo-Saxon, and the habitual language of religious life, 
while the lays of Gower and Chaucer are more freely decorated with 
the flowers of an exotic and artificial phraseology. " — Marsh, "Lects. 
on Eng. Lang.," page 168. 

301 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

Marsh may state the matter too strongly when he calls 
the accomplished and diligent Tyndale " merely a full- 
grown Wycliffe " ; adding that he " not only retains 
the general grammatical structure of the older version, 
but most of its felicitous verbal combinations, and, 
what is more remarkable, he preserves even the rhyth- 
mic flow of its periods." * It may be said in reply, as 
it has been, that much of what is common to the ver- 
sions came into both out of the Yulgate, by which one 
was determined, the other influenced. Still it is true 
that what Mr. Marsh elsewhere calls " the sacred and 
religious dialect " which has continued the language of 
devotion and of Scriptural translation to the pres- 
ent day, was first established in England by the 
"Wycliffe version ; 2 and that what Mr. Froude has 
characterized as the peculiar genius, of mingled ten- 
derness and majesty, of Saxon simplicity and preter- 
natural grandeur, which breathes through the latest 
translation, 3 had its example, and partly its source, in 
the earliest. Tyndale, Coverdale, Rogers, Cranmer, 
the Geneva translators, King James' revisers, have all 
contributed something to the work, but they only 
heighten, without obscuring, its early luster ; and the 
final revision for which we look, with all the aids 
which the most untiring scholarship has gathered, 
must still abide, in its vocabulary, and in much of 
whatever charm it may possess through noble and 
harmonious forms of verbal combination, on. the prim- 
itive foundations of five hundred years since. 

How vast the impression produced by the version 

1 Lects. on Eng. Lang., page 627. 

2 Lects. on Origin and Hist. Eng. Lang., page 365. 

3 Hist, of Eng., Vol. III., page 86. 

302 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

which thus burst into use, not on language only, but 
on life, in the whole sphere of moral, social, spiritual, 
even political experience, who shall declare ! To the 
England of his time, confused, darkened, with dim 
outlook over this world or the next, the Lutterworth 
Rector brought the superlative educational force. 
He opened before it, in the Bible, long avenues of 
history. He made it familiar with the most enchant- 
ing and quickening sketches of personal character 
ever penciled. He carried it to distant lands and 
peoples, further than crusaders had gone with Richard, 
further than Alfred's messengers had wandered. It 
saw again the " city of palms " in sudden ruin, and 
heard the echoes of cymbal and shawm from the 
earliest temple. The grandest poetry became its 
possession ; the sovereign law, on which the blaze of 
Sinai shone, or which glowed with serener light of 
divinity from the Mount of Beatitudes. Inspired 
minds came out of the past — Moses, David, Isaiah, 
John, the man of Idumea, the man of Tarsus — to 
teach by this version the long-desiring English mind. 
It gave peasants the privilege of those who had heard 
Elijah's voice in the ivory palaces, of those who had 
seen the heaven opened by the river of Chebar, of 
those who had gathered before the "temples made 
with hands " which crowned the Acropolis. They 
looked into the faces of apostles and martyrs, of seers 
and kings, and walked with Abraham in the morning 
of time. 

They stood face to face, amid these pages, with One 
higher than all ; and the kingliest life ever lived on 
the earth became near and supreme to the souls which 
had known no temper in rank save that of disdain, no 

303 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

touch of power which did not oppress. Not only 
again, in lucid column, the pillar of fire marshaled 
God's hosts. ]STot only again were waters divided, and 
fountains made to gush from rocks. Angelic songs 
were heard once more, above the darkened earthly 
hills. Again, as aforetime, the Lord of Glory walked 
as a brother from Nazareth and from Bethany, strew- 
ing miracles in his path, yet leading the timid to the 
mount which burned with peaceful splendor, showing 
the penitent his cross, walking with mourners to the 
tomb. From the paradise of the past to the paradise 
above, the vast vision stretched ; and gates of pearl 
were brightly opened above the near and murky skies. 
The thoughts of men were carried up on the thoughts 
of God, then first articulate to them. The lowly 
English roof was lifted, to take in heights beyond the 
stars. Creation, Providence, Kedemption, appeared, 
harmonious with each other, and luminous with eternal 
wisdom ; a light streamed forward on the history of 
the world, a brighter light on the vast and immortal 
experience of the soul ; the bands of darkness broke 
apart, and the universe was effulgent with the luster 
of Christ ! 

Of course this influence was not all felt by many 
minds ; perhaps not in its fulness by any. But it was 
thenceforth at home in England ; at home, to stay. 
It smote with irresistible energy on the rings and 
fetters of Pontifical rule. It contributed a force of 
expansion and uplift to every soul on which its 
quickening blessing fell. It became an instrument of 
popular liberty, as well as a means of elevation and 
grace to personal souls. There was the English Re- 
naissance ! Leighton, and Owen, and Jeremy Tay- 

304 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

lor, became possible afterward ; Bacon and Hooker, 
Shakespeare and Milton, Dry den and Wordsworth, 
and Robert Burns. The world of letters had found a 
language for the majestic periods of Burke, for Ad- 
dison's or Macaulay's prose, for Gibbon's sentences, 
moving as' with the tread of an imperial triumph. The 
world of life had received to itself a transfiguring 
energy. Celestial forces mingled thenceforth, more 
vitally, widely, with human thought ; and the inde- 
structible holy influence, though often interrupted, 
never ceased, till it came to its final inevitable fruition 
in the perfect liberty of the Scriptures in England. 1 

The subsequent months of Wycliffe's life were like 
the stormy afternoon, whose turbulence ceases, whose 
glooms are scattered, in the sunset's golden tranquil- 
lity. An ecclesiastical assembly at London — called by 
him " the Earthquake Council," because it was shaken 
by a tremble of the planet — condemned his doctrines, 
but left him untouched, apparently because of the spirit 
of the Commons. 2 Oxford repelled or evaded the 
attacks repeated upon him, but at last yielded to a 
royal mandate, and his long connection with it was 

1 Hume speaks slightingly of Wycliffe — as might have been ex- 
pected from a blind giant, discoursing of distant electric flames — but 
in no small measure he owed his opportunity to weave choice words 
into a pleasing and perspicuous narrative to him of whom Dr. Vaughan 
has temperately said, that " his writings contributed, far more than 
those of any other man, to form and invigorate the dialect of his coun- 
try."— Life of Wycliffe, Vol. I, page 243. 

2 His characteristic comment on the assembly was: "The Council 
charged Christ and the Saints with a heresy ; hence the earth trembled 
and shook, and a strong voice answered in the place of God, as it hap- 
pened at the time of the last Passion of Christ, when he was condemned 
to bodily death."— See Neander, "Hist, of Church," Vol. V, page 
162. 

T 305 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

closed. In November, A. D. 1382, he again defended 
his doctrine before the Provincial Synod assembled 
in Oxford, and again escaped personal sentence or 
assault. The weight of his character in the country 
was too great, his following was too large, to be 
challenged without danger. A vigorous memorial ad- 
dressed to Parliament, against the English crusade 
for Urban, was one of his last public papers, though 
many brief tracts were written and distributed to the 
end of his life, and his sermons went forth as leaves 
on the wind. Three hundred of them still remain. 
He expected martyrdom, * and others as surely ex- 
pected it for him. But he was of that iron temper 
which fire hardens into steel. His courage mounted 
with occasion ; and he found it as true in his own 
time as it ever had been, " the nearer the sword, the 
nearer to God." In point of fact, he was never sub- 
jected to blade or brand. He wrought in patience at 
his rectory, making it a center of impulse to England. 
He stood to his convictions, whether the Pope cited 
him or not, though even the powerful John of Gaunt 
fell from his side, till a stroke of paralysis a second 
time smote him, as he was engaged in divine offices, 
on the day of the Holy Innocents, at the close of the 
year 1384 ; and on the final day of that year, as 
reckoned by us, he passed out of earthly struggle and 
care, and entered his immortal rest. 

Ladies and Gentlemen : — I would not exagger- 
ate anything in this man, but I am sure we must feel 

1 " We have but to preach consistently [constanter] the law of 
Christ, even before the prelates of Caesar, and a blooming martyrdom 
will promptly come, if we abide in faith and patience. " — Trialogus, 
111, ch. 15. 

306 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

that it is with one of the heroical persons, making 
nations greater and histories splendid, that we have 
walked for a little this evening. Of course by his 
translation of the Scriptures he stands in most obvious 
relation to us. But the brightness of his fame in this 
connection may have concealed from the common 
thought the various and preeminent ability of the 
man, the large place which he filled in his time, the 
breadth and energy of his manifold influence. He 
does not loom into large proportions because we see 
him through morning mists. The more closely we 
study him, from different sides, the more surely will 
he win our admiring honor. 

It is not often that a man without note, except 
among scholars, steps forward suddenly to a principal 
place in public counsel. He breaks into sight, amid 
the turmoil of his time, as a preordained leader, 
simply pushed to the front by an imperious impulse 
of nature. It is not often that a man addicted to 
subtle and large philosophical speculation proves 
practical and acute in the sphere of affairs. He was 
recognized as first among scholastic philosophers, 1 

1 Henry Knighton, Canon of Leicester, and vehemently opposed to 
Wycliffe, yet spoke of him thus : ' ' Doctor in Theologia eminentis- 
simus in diebus illis. In philosophia nulli reputabatur secundus ; in 
scholasticis disciplinis incbmparabilis. Hie maxime nitebatur aliorum 
ingenia subtilitate scientise et profunditate ingenii sui transcendere, 
et ab opinionibus eorum variare. ' ' — See Vaughan's ' ' Life of Wycliffe, ' ' 
Vol. I, page 24? (note). 

Neander says of him : "In his pervading practical bent, we rec- 
ognize a peculiarity of the English mind which has constantly been 
preserved. But to this was joined, in the case of Wiclif, an original 
speculative element ; an element which, in those times, was also es- 
pecially developed among the English, though at a later period'it re- 
tired more into the background." — Hist, of Church, Vol. V, page 135. 

307 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

yet none surpassed him in political discussion, for 
force of statement, for grasp of principles, for sagacity 
or for daring. It is not often that one trained from 
childhood to familiar use of unclassical Latin becomes 
an attractive or a competent writer in a different 
tongue. He created an English style, rugged, 
idiomatic, whose sentences crash on the ear like grape- 
shot, whose words are half-battles, which has an oc- 
casional subtle charm, in the fine beauty of phrase 
and rhythm. 

Blameless, reserved, ascetic in life, 1 he was humor- 
ous, too, with jests that were arguments, and with a 
severe, though a beneficent, sarcasm ; as when it was 
said that the Scripture does not recognize friars ; " but 
it does," was his answer, " in this text, ' I know you 
not ! ' " He was radical in his views, in Church and 
State, while a revered leader in a great University. 
Of knightly blood, and bred among students, till his 
alleged errors were attributed by his enemies to his 
subtlety of mind and inordinate learning, he judged 
the plain people more correctly than themselves ; he 
interpreted the prophecy of their vague aspiration, 
and was not afraid of the final effect of even their 
wantonness. He had a deep sense of human sinful- 
ness ; but a nobler eulogy on human nature than ever 
was spoken was that wrought into action in his en- 
deavor to make common to men the thoughts of God. 
The rector of a parish church, he organized a mission 

1 "His austere exemplary life has defied even calumny : his vigor- 
ous, incessant efforts to reduce the whole clergy to primitive poverty 
have provoked no retort as to his own pride, self-interest, indulgence, 
inconsistent with his earnest severity." — Milman, "Lat. Christ.," 
Book xiii, ch. vi. < 

308 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

which moulded the moral life of the kingdom, till 
every second man was a Lollard. In the solitude of 
his study, he dared to question the faith of ages, to 
plant himself on spiritual certainties, and to balance 
his mind, in the tranquillity of reason, against the 
whole shock of church authority. Apparently neither 
seeking nor shrinking from contest, he smote the Pope 
with tremendous anathemas, at a time when heresy 
was more odious than treason, and when reverence 
for the Pontiff was the religion of Christendom. 
With instinctive prescience he saw the immense op- 
portunity of the time ; and living in an age when 
prelates were humbled, and armies were awed, before 
the impalpable power of Rome, without helmet or 
miter he stood invincible for pure freedom of soul. 

He was equally great in intellectual force, and in 
the more vital and sovereign energy of character and 
will. His whole personality went into his work, with 
an utter consecration. It was this which made him so 
momentous a force in the great discussion and stir of 
his time. It was this which set him in living fellow- 
ship with great souls of the past. It was not Brad- 
wardine, or Grostete, alone, whom he represented. 
The freedom-loving archbishops of England had in 
him an unprelatical successor. Augustine, Bernard, 
Thomas Aquinas, Peter Lombard, — their thought he 
had mastered, and wherever their spirit had been most 
royal he also had felt it. Even Dominic and Francis 
had given to him of the fire of their souls. 1 The 

ia In one passage he even places St. Francis of Assisi with his 
mendicancy, side by side with the Apostles Peter and Paul, with their 
hard labor. . . . And in other places he expresses himself in such 
terms as to show that he looks upon the foundations, both of St. 

309 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

Saxon Church found in this priest of Korman descent 
the sympathizing champion of its long-struggling and 
unsatisfied zeal. So his life had the roots, and his in- 
fluence took the reach, which transcend the limita- 
tions of individual force, which belong to essential 
moral powers, successively impersonated, never des- 
troyed, and at home in all ages. 

The years which followed him in his own country 
were years of darkness, almost of death, to the cause 
with which he identified his life. Almost singly, for 
a time, he had held antagonist forces at bay. With 
the withdrawal of his grand personality, the powers 
which he had arrested for the time gained volume and 
velocity, while they learned a new cruelty both from 
previous fear and from later success. His followers 
were scattered, and multitudes of them were ruthlessly 
flung to the flood or the flame. In the Convocation 
of A. D. 1408, it was forbidden to translate the Scrip- 
tures or to read any version of them- composed in his 
time. 1 After the Council of Constance, by which all 
his writings were condemned, his bones were burned, 
and their very ashes strewed on the stream, that Avon 
might carry them to Severn, and Severn to the sea ; 

Francis and St. Dominic, as a species of reformation of the Church, 
yea, as a thought inspired by the Holy Ghost himself.'* — Lechler, 
"John Wiclif," etc., Vol. II, page 143. 

1 " Therefore we enact and ordain that no one henceforth do, by his 
own authority, translate any text of Holy Scripture into the English 
tongue, or any other, by way of book or treatise; nor let any such 
book or treatise now lately composed in the time of John Wycliffe, 
aforesaid, or since, or hereafter to be composed, be read in whole or in 
part in public or private, under the pain of the greater excommunica- 
tion." — Quoted by Vaughan, "Life of Wycliffe," Vol. II, page 44 
(note) . 

310 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

but it was, as his disciples said, that the World might 
be his sepulchre, and Christendom his convert. There 
came a time, even in England, when the fatal laws 
against his adherents fell dead in their places, and 
when the almost anarchic frenzy which attended the 
long wars of the Roses gave way to a peace in which 
liberty thrived. That was the time for which his 
quickening thought had waited ; and having brooded 
silent in the air it then burst into voice, as if touching 
a thousand souls at once. Still earlier on the Conti- 
nent, in Bohemia, and in Italy, had been felt his vast 
impulse. John Huss, Jerome of Prague, Savonarola, 
repeated the onset of his fearless spirit on the system 
which, like him, they fought to the death, with their 
differing powers, with their equal consecration ; and 
no one of all died in vain. 1 

In a copy of the Missal containing the ancient Hus- 
site Liturgy, in the library of the " Clementinum " at 
Prague, richly illuminated by loving hands, Wycliffe 
is pictured at the top, kindling a spark ; Huss, below 

1 "Huss himself declares, in a paper composed about the year 1411, 
that, for thirty years, writings of Wicklif were read at Prague Uni- 
versity, and that he himself had been in the habit of reading them 
for more than twenty years." — Neander, "Hist, of Church," Vol. V, 
page 242. 

The Eoman Catholic Lingard says of him: " Wycliffe made a new 
translation, multiplied the copies with the aid of transcribers, and by 
his poor priests recommended it to the perusal of their hearers. In 
their hands it became an engine of wonderful power. Men were flat- 
tered by the appeal to their private judgment; its new doctrines in- 
sensibly gained partisans and protectors in the higher classes, who 
alone were acquainted with the use of letters; a spirit of inquiry was 
generated; and the seeds were sown of that religious revolution which 
in little more than a century astonished and convulsed the nations of 
Europe. "—Hist, of Eng., Vol. Ill, page 311. 

311 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

him, blowing it to a flame ; Luther, still lower, waving 
on high the lighted torch. It is a true picture of that 
succession in which others followed, with brightening 
luster, this " Morning Star of the Reformation," till 
the sky was glowing, through all its arch, with the 
radiance of the upspringing light ! 

Out of that Reformation issued the new prophetic 
age whose ample brightness is around us. It lifted 
England to its great place in Europe. It wrenched 
powerful states from the Papal control. It gave a 
wholly new freedom to spirit and thought. It filled 
this land with its Protestant colonies. It opens to us 
opportunity and hope. It is on the work accom- 
plished by Wycliffe, and by those who followed, that 
our liberties have been builded. They are not acci- 
dental. They have not been based on diplomacies, or 
on battles, however these may have sometimes con- 
firmed them. They have not been framed, in their 
solid strength, by the theories of philosophers, or the 
inventive devices of statesmen. They are founded on 
the Bible, made common to all. They have been 
wrought to their vast, enduring, symmetrical propor- 
tions — more lovely than of palaces, statelier than 
cathedrals — by their wisdom and patience who had 
learned from the Bible that human power has no au- 
thority over the conscience ; that man, through Christ, 
has inheritance in God ; and that, by reason of his 
immortality, he has a right to be helped, and not hin- 
dered, by the government which is the organ of 
society. If the England of Yictoria is different from 
that of Richard Second, if the present Archbishop of 
Canterbury is a holy apostle by the side of Courtenay 
or Arundel, if the story of what the kingdom then 

312 



WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE 

was appears to men now a ghastly dream — it is be- 
cause the Bible was made, through toil and strife and 
agony of blood, the common possession of the people 
who dwelt " on the sides of the North." 1 

Thank God ! that the Book, which at Oxford and 
Lutterworth was first transferred, in its whole extent, 
to the English tongue, which this Society has so 
widely distributed, and for whose final revised trans- 
lation we now are looking, has been, is now, and shall 
be henceforth, the American Inheritance: expounded 
from the pulpit, taught in the household, at home in 
the school. It is not ours by our own effort, but by 
this struggle of many generations. It is not ours for 
our own time alone, but for the centuries which shall 
follow. The half-millennium which has passed since 
Wycliffe, the millennium since Alfred founded his 
" Dooms " on its Commandments, have not wasted its 
force. With a divine energy it works to-day, on 
every hand, for grace and greatness. No future age 
will cease to need its law, and truth, and inspiration. 

To us is given the humbler work of making it gen- 
eral and permanent in the land, as others for us have 
made it free. In the measure of our indebtedness to 
them, are we responsible for this future. Let us not 
be unmindful of the great obligation ! Let us rival, 
at least, their zeal for freedom, their devotion to truth, 
if we may not rival that invincible courage which 

1 ' ' Almost a hundred and fifty years before Luther, nearly the same 
doctrines as he taught had been maintained by Wyckliffe, whose dis- 
ciples, usually called Lollards, lasted as a numerous, though obscure 
and proscribed sect, till, aided by the confluence of foreign streams, 
they swelled into the Protestant Church of England." — Hallam, 
"Const. Hist, of Eng.," Vol. I, page 57. 

313 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

shrank not from prisons, and was friendly with 
Death : that these our years of noisy whirl may have 
in them still the moral forces which gave to theirs 
majestic renown ; that the frame of free government, 
and of spiritual worship, builded on their immortal 
foundations, may be worthy the grand and costly life 
which cemented its base; that the latest age of 
American History still may repeat those words of 
Wycliffe, written amid the heavy glooms which now 
are scattered, and in the front of menacing perils 
which now are not : " I am assured that the truth of 
the gospel may, indeed, for a time, be cast down in 
particular places, and may, for a while, abide in 
silence, in consequence of the threats of Antichrist ; 
but extinguished it never can be. For the Truth itself 
has said, ' Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my 
words shall never pass ' ! " 



314 



VI 

THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN 
BRIDGE 

An Oration delivered at the Opening of the Bridge, May 24, 1883. 



VI 
THE NEW YOEK AND BROOKLYN" BRIDGE 



Mr. Chaikman — Fellow-Citizens : 

It can surprise no one that we celebrate the com- 
pletion of this great work, in which lines of delicate 
and. aerial grace are combined with a strength more 
enduring than of marbles, and the woven wires pro- 
long to these heights the metropolitan avenues. After 
delays which have often disturbed the popular pa- 
tience, and have oftener disappointed the hopes of the 
builders, we gratefully welcome this superb consum- 
mation: rejoicing to know that " the silver streak" 
which so long has divided this city from the continent, 
is conquered, henceforth, by the silver band stretching 
above it, careless alike of wind and tide, of ice and 
fog, of current and of calm. 

To the mind which, for fourteen years, has watched, 
guided and governed the work, looking out upon it 
through physical organs almost fatally smitten in its 
prosecution, we bring our eager and unanimous tribute 
of honor and applause. He who took up, elaborated, 
and has brought to fulfilment the plans of the father, 
whose own life had been sacrificed in their further- 
ance, has builded to both the noblest memorial. He 
may with truth have said, heretofore, as the furnaces 

317 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

have glowed from which this welded network has 
come, in the words of Schiller's " Lay of the Bell " : 

Deep hid within the nether cell 
What Force with Fire is moulding thus, 

In yonder airy towers shall dwell, 
And witness wide and far of us. 

He may, at this hour, add for himself the lines which 
the poet hears from the lips of his House-Master : 

My house is built upon a rock, 
And sees unmoved the stormy shock 
Of waves that fret below. 

It must be a superlative moment in life when one 
stands on a structure as majestic as this which was at 
first a mere thought in the brain, which was after- 
ward a plan on the paper, and which has been trans- 
ported hither, from quarry and mine, from wood-yard 
and workshop, on the point of his pencil. 

He would be the first to acknowledge also, if he 
were speaking, the intelligent, faithful, indefatigable 
service rendered in execution of his plans by those 
who have been associated with him, as assistant engi- 
neers, as master mechanics, or as trained, trusted and 
experienced workmen. On their knowledge and vigi- 
lance, their practised skill and patient fidelity, the 
work has of necessity largely depended for its com- 
pleted grace and strength. They have wrought the 
zealous labor of years into all parts of it ; and it will 
bear to them hereafter, as it does to-day, most honor- 
able witness. 

Some of our honored fellow-citizens, who have borne 
a distinguished part in this enterprise, are no more 
here to share our festivities. Mr. John H. Prentice, 

318 



THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE 

for years the Treasurer of the Board, wise in counsel, 
of a liberal yet a watchful economy, of incorruptible 
integrity, passed, from the earth two years ago ; but 
to those who knew him his memory is as fresh as the 
verdure above his grave at Greenwood. More lately, 
one who had been from the outset associated with 
what to many appeared this visionary plan, to whose 
capacity and experience, his legal skill, his legislative 
influence, his social distinction, the work has been 
always largely indebted, and who was for years the 
President of the Board, has followed into the silent 
land. It is a grief to all who knew him that he is not 
here to see the consummation of labors and plans 
which for years had occupied his life. But his face 
and figure are before us, almost as distinctly as if he 
were present ; and it will be only the dullest forgetful- 
ness which can ever cease to connect with this Bridge 
the name of the accomplished scholar, the experienced 
diplomatist, the untiring worker, the cordial and ever- 
helpful friend, Mr. Henry C. Murphy. 

But others remain to whom the work has brought 
its burdens, of labor, care and long solicitude, some- 
times, no doubt, of a public criticism whose imperious 
sharpness they may have felt, but who have followed 
their plans to completion, without wavering or pause ; 
who have, indeed, expanded those plans as the progress 
of the work has suggested enlargement ; and who, 
to-day, enter the reward which belongs to those who, 
after promoting a magnificent enterprise, see it ac- 
complished. Among them are two who were asso- 
ciated with it at the beginning, and who have con- 
tinued so associated from that day to this — Mr. 
William C. Kingsley, Mr. James S. T. Stranahan. 

319 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

The judgment cannot be mistaken which affirms that 
to these men, more than to any other citizens remain- 
ing among us, the prosecution of this work to its 
crowning success is properly ascribed. They are the 
true orators of the hour. We may praise, but they 
have builded. On the tenacity of their purpose, of 
which that of these combining wires only presents the 
physical image, — on the lift of their wills, stronger 
than of these consenting cables, — the immense struc- 
ture has risen to its place. No grander work has it 
been given to men to do for the city, which will feel 
the unfailing impulse of their foresight and "courage, 
their wisdom in counsel, and their resolute service, to 
the end of its history ! 

Mr. William Marshall and Gen. Henry W. Slocum, 
were also connected with the work at the outset, 
and, with intervals in the period of their service, have 
given it important assistance to the end ; while others 
are with us who have joined with intelligence, 
enthusiasm and helpfulness in the councils of the 
Board at different times. We rejoice in the presence 
of all those who, earlier or later, have taken part in 
the plans, at once vast and minute, which now are 
realized. We offer them the tribute of our admiring 
and grateful esteem. We trust that their remem- 
brance of the work they have accomplished, and their 
personal experience of its manifold benefits, may con- 
tinue through many happy years. And we congratu- 
late ourselves, as well as them, that the city will keep 
the memorial of them, not in yonder tablets alone, but 
in the great fabric above which those stand, while 
stone and steel retain their strength. 

But, after all, the real builder of this surpassing and 

320 



THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE 

significant structure has been the people ; whose 
watchfulness of its progress has been constant, whose 
desire for its benefits has been the incentive behind 
its plans, by whom its treasury has been supplied, 
whose exultant gladness now welcomes its success. 
The people of New York have illustrated anew their 
magnanimous spirit in cheerfully supplying their share 
of the cost, though not anticipating from such large 
outlay direct reliefs and signal advantages. The 
people of Brooklyn have shown at least an intelligent, 
intrepid and far-sighted sagacity, in readily accept- 
ing the immediate burdens in expectation of future 
returns. 

Such a popular achievement is one to be proud of. 
St. Petersburg could be commenced one hundred and 
eighty years ago — almost to a day, on May 27th, 
1703 — and could afterward be built, by the will of an 
autocrat, to give him a new center of empire, with a 
nearer outlook over Europe ; its palaces rising on arti- 
ficial foundations, which it cost, it is said, one hundred 
thousand lives in the first year to lay. Paris could be 
reconstructed, twenty-five years ago, by the mandate 
of an emperor, determined to make it more beautiful 
than before, to open new avenues for guns and troops, 
to give to its laborers, who might become trouble- 
some, desired occupation. But not only have these 
cities of ours been founded, built, reconstructed by the 
people, but this charming and mighty avenue in the 
air, by which they are henceforth rebuilt into one, is 
to the people's honor and praise. It shows what 
multitudes, democratically organized, can do if they 
will. It will show, to those who shall succeed us, to 
what largeness of enterprise, what patience of pur- 
u 321 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

pose, what liberal wisdom, the populations now ruling 
these associated cities were competent in their time. 
It takes the aspect, as so regarded, of a durable monu- 
ment to Democracy itself. 

We congratulate the mayors of both the cities, with 
their associates in the government of them, on the 
public spirit manifested by both, on the ampler oppor- 
tunities offered to each, and on those intimate alliances 
between them which are a source of happiness to both, 
and which are almost certainly prophetic of an organic 
union to be realized hereafter. And we trust that the 
crosses, encircled by the laurel wreath, on the original 
seal of New Amsterdam, with the Dutch legend of 
this city, " Union makes Strength," may continue to 
describe them, whether or not stamped upon parch- 
ments and blazoned on banners, as long as human eyes 
shall see them. 

The work now completed is of interest to both cities, 
and its enduring and multiplying benefits will be 
found, we are confident, to be common, not local. 

We who have made and steadfastly kept our homes 
in Brooklyn, and who are fond and proud of the city — 
for its fresh, bracing and healthful air, and the bril- 
liant outstretch of sea and land which opens from its 
Heights; for its scores of thousands of prosperous 
homes ; for its unsurpassed schools, its cooperating 
churches, the social temper which pervades it, the in- 
dependence and enterprise of its journals, and the local 
enthusiasms which they fruitfully foster ; for its gen- 
eral liberality, and the occasional splendid examples 
of individual munificence which have given it fame ; 
for its recent but energetic institutions, of literature, 
art and a noble philanthropy ; and for the stimulating 

322 



THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE 

enterprise and culture of the young life which is com- 
ing to command in it — we have obvious reason to re- 
joice in the work which brings us into nearer connec- 
tion with all that is delightful and all that is enriching 
in the metropolis, and with that diverging system of 
railways, overspreading the continent, which has in 
the commercial capital its natural center of radiation. 

We have no word of criticism to speak, only words 
of most hearty admiration, for the safe and speedy 
water-service on the lines of the ferries which has 
given us heretofore such easy transportation from city 
to city, without delays that were not unavoidable, and 
with remarkable exemption from disaster. So far as 
human carefulness and skill could assure safety and 
speed, in the midst of conditions unfriendly to both, 
the management of these ferries has been peerless, 
their success unsurpassed. To them is due, in largest 
measure, the rapid growth already here realized. They 
have formed the indispensable arteries, of supply and 
transmission, through which the circulating life-blood 
has flowed, and their ministry to this city has been 
constant and vital. But we confess ourselves glad to 
reach, with surer certainty and a greater rapidity, the 
libraries and galleries, the churches and the homes, as 
well as the resorts of business and of pleasure, with 
which we are now in instant connection ; and the ho- 
rizon widens around us as we touch with more immedi- 
ate contact the lines of travel which open hence to the 
edges of the continent. 

If we have not as much to offer in immediate re- 
turn, we have, at least, a broad expanse of uncovered 
acres within the city, for the easy occupation of those 
who wish homes, either modest or splendid, or who 

323 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

shall wish such as the growth of the metropolis multi- 
plies its population into the millions, crowds its roofs 
higher toward the stars, and makes a productive silver 
mine of each several house-lot. And to those who 
visit us but at intervals we can open not only yonder 
park, set like an emerald in the great circular sweep of 
our boundaries from the waters of the Narrows to the 
waters of the Sound, but also their readiest approach 
to the ocean. The capital and the sea are henceforth 
brought to nearer neighborhood. Long Island bays 
and brooks and beaches are within readier reach of 
the town. The winds that have touched no other land 
this side of Cuba are more accessible to those who seek 
their tonic breath. The long roll of the surf on the 
shore breaks closer than before to office and mansion, 
and to tenement chamber. 

The benefits will, therefore, be reciprocal, which 
pass back and forth across this solid and stately frame- 
work ; and both cities will rejoice, we gladly hope, in 
the patience and labor, the disciplined skill, the large 
expenditure, of which it is the trophy and fruit. New 
York has now the unique opportunity to widen its 
boundaries to the sea, and around its brilliant civic 
shield, more stately and manifold than that of Achilles, 
by the aid of those who have wrought already these 
twisted bracelets and clasping cables, to set the glow- 
ing margin of the ocean-stream. 

This work is important, too, we cannot but feel, in 
wider relations ; for what it signifies, as for what it 
secures, and for all that it promises. Itself a repre- 
sentative product and part of the new civilization, one 
standing on it finds an outlook from it of larger cir- 
cumference than that of these cities. 

324 



THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE 

Every enterprise like this, successfully accomplished, 
becomes an incentive to others like it. It leads on to 
such, and supplies incessant encouragement to them. 
We may not know, or probably conjecture, what these 
are to be, in the city or the state, in the years that 
shall come. But, whatever they may be, for the more 
complete equipment of either with conditions of hap- 
piness and the instruments of progress, they will all 
take an impulse from that which here has been accom- 
plished. Such a trophy of triumph over an original 
obstacle of Nature will not contribute to sleep in oth- 
ers ; and whatever is needed of material improvement, 
throughout the state of which it is our pride to be citi- 
zens, will be only more surely and speedily supplied 
because of this impressive success. 

It is, therefore, most fitting to our festival that we 
are permitted to welcome to it the Chief Magistrate of 
the State, with those representing its different regions 
in the legislative councils. We rejoice to remember 
that the work before us has been assisted by the favor- 
ing action of those heretofore in authority in the state ; 
and we trust that to those now holding high offices in 
it, who are present to-day, the occasion will be one of 
pleasant experience, and of enlarged and reinforced 
expectation. 

Indeed, it is not extravagant to say that the future 
of the country opens before us, as we see what skill 
and will can do to overleap obstacles, and make nature 
subservient to human designs. So we gladly welcome 
these eminent men from other states ; while the pres- 
ence of the Executive Head of the Nation, and of 
some of the members of his cabinet, is appropriate to 
the time, as it is an occasion of sincere and profound 

325 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

gratification to us all. "Without the concurrence of 
the national government, this structure, though pri- 
marily of local relations, as reaching across these 
navigable waters, could not have been built. "We feel 
assured that those honorably representing that gov- 
ernment, who favor its completion with their attend- 
ance, and in whose presence political differences are 
forgotten, will share with us in the joyful pride with 
which we regard it, and in the inspiring anticipation 
that the physical apparatus of civilization in the land 
is to take fresh impulse, not impediment or hindrance, 
from that which here has been effected. The day 
seems brought distinctly nearer when the nation, 
equipped with the latest implements furnished by 
science, shall master and use as never before its rich 
domain. 

Not only the modern spirit is here, even in emi- 
nence, which dares great effort for great advantage ; 
but the chiefest of modern instruments is here, 
which is the ancient untractable iron, transfigured 
into steel. 

It was a sign, and even a measure, of ancient de- 
generacy, when the Age of Gold was followed if not 
forgotten by one of Iron. Decadence of arts, of 
learning and laws, of society itself, was implied in the 
fact. The more intrepid intelligence, the more versa- 
tile energy, amid which we live, have achieved the 
success of combining the two : so that while it is true 
now, as of old, that " no mattock plunges a golden 
edge into the ground, and no nail drives a silver point 
into the plank," it is also true that, under the stimulus 
of the larger expenditure which the added supplies of 
gold make possible, the duller metal has taken a fine- 

326 



THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE 

ness, a brightness and hardness, with a tensile strength, 
before unfamiliar. 

The iron, as of old, quarries the gold, and cuts it out 
from river-bed and from rock. But, under the alchemy 
which gold applies, the iron takes nobler properties 
upon it. Converted into steel, in masses that would 
lately have staggered men's thoughts, it becomes the 
kingliest instrument of peoples for subduing the earth. 
Things dainty and things mighty are fashioned from 
it in equal abundance : — gun-carriage and cannon, with 
the solid platforms on which they rest ; the largest 
castings, and heaviest plates, as well as wheel, axle 
and rail, as well as screw or file or saw. It is shaped 
into the hulls of ships. It is built alike into column 
and truss, balcony, roof and springing dome. To the 
loom and the press, and the boiler from whose fierce 
and untiring heart their force is supplied, it is equally 
apt ; while, as drawn into delicate wires, it is coiled 
into springs, woven into gauze, sharpened into needles, 
twisted into ropes ; it is made to yield music in all our 
homes ; electric currents are sent upon it, along our 
streets, around the world ; it enables us to talk with 
correspondents afar, or it is knit, as before our eyes, 
into the new and noble causeways of pleasure and of 
commerce. 

I hardly think that we yet appreciate the significance 
of this change which has passed upon iron. It is the 
industrial victory of the century, not to have heaped 
the extracted gold in higher piles, or to have crowded 
the bursting vaults with accumulated silver, but to have 
conferred, by the sovereign touch of scientific invention, 
flexibility, grace, variety of use, an almost ethereal and 
spiritual virtue, on the stubbornest of common metals. 

327 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

The indications of physical achievement in the future, 
thus inaugurated, outrun the compass of human thought. 

Two bridges lie near each other, across the historical 
stream of the Moldau, under the shadow of the ancient 
and haughty palace at Prague — the one the picturesque 
bridge of St. Nepomuk, patron of bridges throughout 
Bohemia, of massive stone, which occupied a century 
and a half in its erection, and was finished almost four 
centuries ago, with stately statues along its sides, with 
a superb monument at its end, sustaining symbolic and 
portrait figures ; the other an iron suspension-bridge, 
built and finished in three years, a half century since, 
and singularly contrasting, in its lightness and grace, 
the somber solidity of the first. It is impossible to 
look upon the two without feeling how distinctly the 
different ages to which they belong are indicated by 
them, and how the ceremonial and military character 
of the centuries that are past has been superseded by 
the rapid and practical spirit of commerce. 

But the modern bridge is there a small one, and 
rests at the center on an island and a pier. The struc- 
ture before us, the largest of its class as yet in the 
world, in its swifter, more graceful, and more daring 
leap from bank to bank, across the tides of this arm of 
the sea, not only illustrates the bolder temper which is 
natural here, the readiness to attempt unparalleled 
works, the disdain of difficulties in unfaltering reliance 
on exact calculation, but, in the material out of which 
it is wrought, it shows the new supremacy of man over 
the metal which, in former time, he scarcely could 
use save for rude and coarse implements. The steel of 
the blades of Damascus or Toledo is not here needed ; 
nor that of the chisel, the knife-blade, the watch-spring, 

328 



THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE 

or the surgical instrument. But the steel of the medi- 
eval lance-head or saber was hardly finer than that 
which is here built into a Castle, which the sea cannot 
shake, whose binding cement the rains cannot loosen, 
and before whose undecaying parapets open fairer 
visions of island and town, of earth, water and sky, 
than from any fortress along the Rhine. There is 
inexhaustible promise in the fact. 

Of course, too, there is impressively before us — 
installed as on this fair and brilliant civic throne — that 
desire for swiftest intercommunication between towns 
and districts divided from each other, which belongs 
to our times, and which is to be an energetic, enduring 
and salutary force in moulding the nation. 

The years are not distant in which separated com- 
munities regarded each other with aversion and dis- 
trust, and the effort was mutual to raise barriers 
between them, not to unite them in closer alliance. 
Now, the traffic of one is vitally dependent on the 
industries of the other ; the counting-room in the one 
has the factory or the warehouse tributary to it es- 
tablished in the other ; and the demand is imperative 
that the two be linked, by all possible mechanisms, in 
a union as complete as if no chasm had opened be- 
tween them. So these cities are henceforth united ; 
and so all cities, which may minister to each other, are 
bound more and more in intimate combinations. 
Santa Fe, which soon celebrates the third of a mil- 
lennium since its foundation, reaches out its connections 
toward the newest log-city in "Washington Territory ; 
and the oldest towns upon our seaboard find allies in 
those that have risen, like exhalations, along the 
Western lakes and rivers. 

329 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

This mighty and symmetrical band before us seems 
to stand as the type of all that immeasurable, com- 
municating system which is more completely with 
every year to interlink cities, to confederate States, to 
make one country of our distributed imperial domain, 
and to weave its history into a vast, harmonious con- 
texture, as messages fly instantaneously across it, and 
the rapid trains rush back and forth, like shuttles 
upon a mighty loom. 

It is not fanciful, either, to feel that in all its his- 
tory, and in what is peculiar in its constitution, it be- 
comes a noble, visible symbol of that benign Peace 
amid which its towers and roadway have risen, and 
which, we trust, it may long continue to signalize and 
to share. 

We may look at this moment on the site of the ship- 
yard from which, in March, 1862, twenty-one years 
ago, went forth the unmasted and raft-like " Monitor," 
with its flat decks, its low bulwarks, its guarded mech- 
anism, its heavy armament, and its impenetrable 
revolving turret, to that near battle with the " Merri- 
mac," on which, as it seemed to us at the time, the 
destiny of the nation was perilously poised. The 
material of which the ship was wrought was largely 
that which is built in beauty into this luxurious lofty 
fabric. But no contrast could be greater among the 
works of human genius than between the compact and 
rigid solidity into which the iron had there been 
forged and wedged and rammed, and these waving 
and graceful curves, swinging downward and up, al- 
most like blossoming festooned vines along the per- 
fumed Italian lanes ; this alluring roadway, resting on 
towers which rise like those of ancient cathedrals ; this 

330 



THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE 

lacework of threads, interweaving their separate deli- 
cate strengths into the complex solidity of the whole. 

The ship was for war, and the Bridge is for peace : 
— the product of it ; almost, one might say, its express 
palpable emblem, in its harmony of proportions, its 
dainty elegance, its advantages for all, and its ample con- 
venience. The deadly raft, floating level with waves, 
was related to this ethereal structure, whose finest 
curves are wrought in the strength of toughest steel. 
We could not have had this except for that unsightly 
craft, which at first refused to be steered, which bumped 
headlong against our piers, which almost sank while 
being towed to the field of its fame, and which, at 
last, when its mission was fulfilled, found its grave in 
the deep over whose waters, and near their line, its 
shattering lightnings had been shot. This structure 
will stand, we fondly trust, for generations to come, 
even for centuries, while metal and granite retain 
their coherence; not only emitting, when the wind 
surges or plays through its network, that aerial music 
of which it is the mighty harp, but representing to 
every eye the manifold bonds of interest and affec- 
tion, of sympathy and purpose, of common political 
faith and hope, over and from whose mightier chords 
shall rise the living and unmatched harmonies of con- 
tinental gladness and praise. 

While no man, therefore, can measure in thought 
the vast processions — forty millions a year, it already is 
computed — which shall pass back and forth across this 
pathway, or shall pause on its summit to survey the 
vast and bright panorama, to greet the break of 
summer morning, or watch the pageant of closing day, 
we may hope that the one use to which it never will 

331 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

need to be put is that of war ; that the one tramp not 
to be heard on it is that of soldiers marching to 
battle ; that the only wheels whose roll it shall not be 
called to echo are the wheels of the tumbrils of troops 
and artillery. Born of peace, and signifving peace, 
may its mission of peace be uninterrupted, till its 
strong towers and cables fall ! 

If such expectations shall be fulfilled, of mechanical 
invention ever advancing, of cities and states linked 
more closely, of beneficent peace assured to all, it is 
impossible to assign any limit to the coming expansion 
and opulence of these cities, or to the influence which 
they shall exert on the developing life of the country. 

Cities have often, in other times, been created by 
war; as men were crowded together in them, the 
better to escape the whirls of strife by which the un- 
walled districts were ravaged, or the more effectively 
to combine their force against threatening foes. And 
it is a striking suggestion of history that to the fright- 
ful ravages of the Huns — swarthy, ill-shaped, fero- 
cious, destroying — may have been due the Great Wall 
of China, for the protection of its remote towns, as to 
them, on the other hand, was certainly due the foun- 
dation of Yenice. The first inhabitants of what has 
been since that queenly city, along whose liquid and 
level streets the traveler passes, between palaces, 
churches and fascinating squares, in constant delight 
— its first inhabitants fled before Attila, to the flooded 
lagoons which were afterward to blossom into the 
beauty of a consummate art. The fearful crash of 
blood and fire in which Aquileia and Padua fell smote 
Yenice into existence. 

But even the city thus born of war must afterward 

332 



THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE 

be built up by peace, when the strifes which had 
pushed it to its sudden beginning had died into the 
distant silence. The fishing industry, the manufacture 
of salt, the timid commerce, gradually expanding till 
it left the rivers and sought the sea, these, with other 
related industries, had made Venetian galle3 T s known 
on the eastern Mediterranean before the immense rush 
of the crusades crowded tumultuously over its quays 
and many bridges. Its variety of industry, and its 
commercial connections, turned that vast movement 
into another source of wealth. It rose rapidly to that 
naval supremacy which enabled it to capture piratical 
vessels and wealthy galleons, to seize or sack Ionian 
cities, to storm Byzantium, and make the south of 
Greece its suburb. Its manufactures were multiplied. 
Its dockyards were thronged with busy workmen. Its 
palaces were crowded with precious and famous works 
of art, while themselves marvels of beauty. St. 
Mark's unfolded its magnificent loveliness above the 
great square. In the palace adjoining was the seat of 
a dominion at the time unsurpassed, and still brilliant 
in history ; and it was in no fanciful or exaggerated 
pride that the Doge was wont yearly, on Ascension 
Day, to wed the Adriatic with a ring, as the bride- 
groom weds the bride. 

Dreamlike as it seems, equally with Amsterdam, 
the larger and richer " Yenice of the North," it was 
erected by hardy hands. The various works and arts 
of peace, with a prosperous commerce, were the real 
piles, sunken beneath the flashing surface, on which 
church and palace, piazza and arsenal, all arose. It 
was only when these unseen supports secretly failed 
that advancement ceased, and the horses of St. Mark 

333 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

at last were bridled. Not all the wars, with Genoa, 
Hungary, with Western Europe, the Greek Empire, 
or the Ottoman — not earthquake, plague, or conflagra- 
tion, though by all it was smitten — overwhelmed the 
city whose place in Europe had been so distinguished. 
The decadence of enterprise, the growing discredit put 
upon industry, the final discovery by Yasco da Gama 
of the passage around the Cape of Good Hope, divert- 
ing traffic into new channels — these laid their silent 
and tightening grasp on the power of Venice, till 

the salt seaweed 
Clung to the marble of her palaces, 

and the glory of the past was merged in a gloom 
which later centuries have not lightened. There is a 
lesson and a promise in the fact. 

New York itself may almost be said to have sprung 
from war ; as the vast excitements of the forty years' 
wrestle between Spain and its revolted provinces gave 
incentive, at least, to the settlement of New Nether- 
land. But the city, since its real development was 
begun, has been almost wholly built up by peace ; and 
the swiftness of its progress in our own time, which 
challenges parallel, shows what, if the ministry of 
this peace shall continue, may be looked for in the 
future. 

When the Dutch traders raised their storehouse of 
logs on yonder untamed and desolate strand, perhaps 
as early as 1615 ; when the Walloons established their 
settlement on this side of the river, in 1624, at that 
" Walloons' Bay " which we still call the Wallabout ; 
or when, later, in 1626, Manhattan Island, estimated 
to contain 22,000 acres, was purchased from the 
Indians for $24, paid in beads, buttons and trinkets, 

334 



THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE 

and the Block House was built, with cedar palisades, 
on the site of the Battery, it is, of course, common- 
place to say that they who had come hither could 
scarcely have had the least conception of what a career 
they thus were commencing for two great cities. But 
it is not so wholly commonplace to say that those who 
saw this now wealthy and splendid New York a 
hundred years since, less conspicuous than Boston, far 
smaller than Philadelphia, with its first bank es- 
tablished in 1784, and not fully chartered till seven 
years later ; with its first daily paper in 1785 ; its first 
ship in the Eastern trade returning in May of the 
same year; its first directory published in 1786, and 
containing only 900 names ; its Broadway extending 
only to St. Paul's ; with the grounds about Reacle 
Street grazing-fields for cattle, and with ducks still 
shot in that Beekman's Swamp which the traffic in 
leather has since made famous : or those who saw it 
even fifty years ago, when its population was little 
more than one-third of the present population of this 
younger city; when its first mayor had not been 
chosen by popular election ; when gas had but lately 
been introduced, and the superseding of the primitive 
pumps by Croton water had not yet been projected — 
they, all, could hardly have imagined what already the 
city should have become — the recognized center of the 
commerce of the continent ; one of the principal cities 
of the world. 

So those who have lived in this city from childhood, 
and who hardly yet claim the dignities of age, could 
scarcely have conjectured, when looking on what Mr. 
Murphy recalled as the village of his youth, " a ham- 
let of a hundred houses," that it should have become, 

335 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

in our time, a city of nearly 70,000 dwelling-houses, 
occupied by twice as many families ; with a popula- 
tion, by the census rates, of little less than 700,000; 
with more than 150,000 children in its public and 
private schools; with 330 miles of paved streets, as 
many as last year in New York, and with more than 
200 additional miles impatiently waiting to be paved ; 
with 130 miles of street railway track, over which 
last year 88,000,000 passengers were carried; with 
nearly 2,500 miles of telegraph and telephone wire 
knitting it together; with 35,000,000 gallons of 
water, the best on the continent, to which 20,000,000 
more are soon to be added, daily distributed in its 
houses, through 360 miles of pipe ; with an aggregate 
value of real property exceeding certainly $400,- 
000,000 ; with an annual tax levy of $6,500,000 ; with 
manufactures in it whose reported product in 1880 
was $103,000,000 ; with a water-front, of pier, dock, 
basin, canal, already exceeding twenty-five miles, and 
not as yet half developed, at which lies shipping from 
all the world, more largely than at the piers of New 
York ; and, finally, with what to most modern com- 
munities appears to flash as a costly but brilliant dia- 
mond necklace, a public debt, beginning now to di- 
minish, it is true, but still approaching, in net amount, 
$37,500,000 ! 

The child watches, in happy wonder, the swelling 
film of soapy water into whose iridescent globe he has 
blown the speck from the bowl of the pipe. But this 
amazing development around us is not of airy and 
vanishing films. It is solidly constructed, in marble 
and brick, in stone and iron, while the proportions to 
which it has swelled surpass precedent, and rebuke 

336 



THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE 

the timidity of the boldest prediction. But that which 
has built it has been simply the industry, manifold, 
constant, going on in these cities, to which peace 
offers incentive and room. 

Their future advancement is to come in like man- 
ner: not through a prestige derived from their his- 
tory ; not by the gradual increments of their wealth, 
already collected; not by the riches which they invite 
to themselves from other cities and distant coasts ; 
not even from their beautiful fortune of location ; but 
by prosperous manufactures prosecuted in them ; by 
the traffic which radiates over the country ; by the 
foreign commerce which, in values increasing every 
year, seeks this harbor. Each railway whose rapid 
wheels roll hither, from east or west, from north or 
south, from the rocks of Newfoundland or the copper 
deposits of Lake Superior, from the orange groves of 
Florida, the Louisiana bayous, the silver ridges of the 
"West, the Golden Gate, gives its guaranty of growth 
to the still young metropolis. On the cotton fields of 
the South, and its sugar plantations ; on coal mines, 
and iron mines ; on the lakes which winter roofs with 
ice, and from which drips refreshing coolness through 
our summer ; on fisheries, factories, wheat-fields, pine 
forests; on meadows wealthy with grains or grass, 
and orchards bending beneath their burdens, this en- 
larging prosperity must be maintained ; and on the 
steamships, and the telegraph lines, which interweave 
us with all the world. The swart miner must do his 
part for it ; the ingenious workman, in whatever de- 
partment ; the ploughman in the field, and the fish- 
erman on the banks ; the man of science, putting 
Nature to the question; the laborer, with no other 
v 337 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

capital than his muscle ; the sailor on the sea, wher- 
ever commerce opens its wings. 

Our Arch of Triumph is, therefore, fitly this Bridge 
of Peace. Our Brandenburg Gate, bearing on its 
summit no car of military victory, is this great work 
of industrial skill. It stands, not, like the Arch 
famous at Milan, outside the city, but in the midst of 
these united and busy populations. And if the tranquil 
public order which it celebrates and prefigures shall 
continue as years proceed, not London itself, a century 
hence, will surpass the compass of this united city by 
the sea, in which all civilized nations of mankind have 
already their many representatives, and to which the 
world shall pay an increasing annual tribute. 

And so the last suggestion comes, which the hour 
presents, and of which the time allows the expression. 

It was not to an American mind alone that we owed 
the " Monitor," of which I have spoken, but also to 
one trained in Swedish schools, the Swedish army, and 
representing that brave nationality. It is not to a 
native American mind that the scheme of construction 
carried out in this Bridge is to be ascribed, but to one 
representing the German peoples, who, in such enrich- 
ing and fruitful multitudes, have found here their 
home. American enterprise, American money, built 
them both. But the skill which devised, and much, no 
doubt, of the labor which wrought them, came from 
afar. 

Local and particular as is the work, therefore, it re- 
presents that fellowship of the nations which is more 
and more prominently a fact of our times, and which 
gives to these cities incessant augmentation. When, 
by and by, on yonder island the majestic French statue 

338 



THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE 

of Liberty shall stand, holding in its hand the radiant 
crown of electric flames, and answering by them to 
those as brilliant along this causeway, our beautiful 
bay will have taken what specially illuminates and 
adorns it from Central and from "Western Europe. 
The distant lands from which oceans divide us, though 
we touch them each moment with the fingers of the 
telegraph, will have set this conspicuous double crown 
on the head of our harbor. The alliances of nations, 
the peace of the world, will seem to find illustrious 
prediction in such superb and novel regalia. 

Friends and Fellow-citizens : Let us not forget 
that, in the growth of these cities, henceforth united, 
and destined ere long to be formally one, lies either a 
threat, or one of the conspicuous promises of the time. 

Cities have always been powers in history. Athens 
educated Greece, as well as adorned it, while Corinth 
filled the throbbing and thirsty Hellenic veins with 
poisoned blood. The weight of Constantinople broke 
the Roman Empire asunder. The capture of the same 
magnificent city gave to the Turks their establishment 
in Europe for the following centuries. Even where 
they have not had such a commanding preeminence of 
location, the social, political, moral force proceeding 
from cities has been vigorous in impression, immense 
in extent. The passion of Paris, for a hundred years, 
has created or directed the sentiment of France. 
Berlin is more than the legislative or administrative 
center of the German Empire. Even a government 
as autocratic as that of the Czar, in a country as un- 
developed as Russia, has to consult the popular feeling 
of St. Petersburg or of Moscow. 

In our nation, political power is widely distributed, 

339 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

and the largest or wealthiest commercial center can 
have but its share. Great as is the weight of the ag- 
gregate vote in these henceforth compacted cities,. the 
vote of the state will always overbear it. Amid the 
suffrages of the nation at large, it can only be reck- 
oned as one of many consenting or conflicting factors. 
But the influence which constantly proceeds from these 
cities — on their journalism, not only, or on the issues 
of their book-presses, or on the multitudes going forth 
from them, but on the example presented by them of 
intellectual, social, religious life — this, for shadow and 
check, or for fine inspiration, is already of unlimited 
extent, of incalculable force. It must increase as they 
expand, and are lifted before the country to a new 
elevation. 

A larger and a smaller sun are sometimes associated, 
astronomers tell us, to form a binary center in the 
heavens, for what is, doubtless, an unseen system re- 
ceiving from them impulse and light. On a scale not 
utterly insignificant, a parallel may be hereafter sug- 
gested in the relation of these combined cities to a 
part, at least, of our national system. Their attitude 
and action during the war — successfully closed under 
the gallant military leadership of men whom we 
gladly welcome and honor — were of vast advantage 
to the national cause. The moral, political, intellec- 
tual temper, which dominates in them, as years go on, 
will touch with beauty, or scar with scorching and 
baleful heats, extended regions. Their religious life, 
as it glows in intensity, or with a faint and failing- 
luster, will be repeated in answering image' from the 
widening frontier. The beneficence which gives them 
grace and consecration, and which, as lately, they fol- 

340 



THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE 

low to the grave with universal benediction, or, on the 
other hand, the selfish ambitions which crowd and 
crush along their streets, intent only on accumulated 
wealth and its sumptuous display, or the glittering 
vices which they accept and set on high — these will 
make their impression on those who never cross the 
continent to our homes, to whom our journals are but 
names. 

Surely, we should not go from this hour, which 
marks a new era in the history of these cities, and 
which points to their future indefinite expansion, 
without the purpose in each of us, that, so far forth as 
in us lies, with their increase in numbers, wealth, 
equipment, shall also proceed, with equal step, their 
progress in whatever is noblest and best in private 
and in public life ; that all which sets humanity for- 
ward shall come in them to ampler endowment, more 
renowned exhibition : so that, linked together, as 
hereafter they must be, and seeing " the purple deep- 
ening in their robes of power," they may be always 
increasingly conscious of fulfilled obligation to the 
nation and to God ; may make the land, at whose 
magnificent gateway they stand, their constant 
debtor ; and may contribute their mighty part toward 
that ultimate perfect Human Society for which the 
seer could find no image so meet or so majestic as 
that of a city, coming down from above; its stones laid 
with fair colors, its foundations with sapphires, its 
windows of agates, its gates of carbuncles, and all its 
borders of pleasant stones, with the sovereign promise 
resplendent above it, — 

"And great shall be the peace of thy children ! " 
341 



YII 
MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR 



The Chancellor's Oration, delivered at the Eighty-sixth Commence- 
ment of Union College, 1883. 



VII 
MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR 



Eckekmann tells us, in his interesting report of 
talks with Goethe, that once, when looking with him 
at some engravings, the poet said : " These are really 
good things. You have before you the work of men 
of very fair talents, who have learned something, and 
have acquired no little taste and art. Still, something 
is wanting in all these pictures — the Manly. Take 
note of this word, and underscore it. The pictures 
lack a certain urgent power, which in former ages was 
generally expressed, but in which the present age is 
deficient ; and that with respect not only to painting, 
but to all the other arts." * 

This remark of the great German not unfrequently 
recurs to one as he stands before pictures, graceful in 
conception, harmonious in composition, radiant in 
color, but wanting in evident and predominant mo- 
tive ; and so wanting the dignity and charm which 
come only from an imperative spiritual impulse, im- 
parting significance to lines and tints. He thinks of 
it in reading many books, where the thoughts elabo- 
rated, or the knowledges assembled, seem quite suf- 
ficient to reward the attention, and where the style 
which commends them to such attention is nowise 
wanting in carefulness or elegance, but where there 
beats no pulse in the pages ; where no pervading and 

345 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

animating spirit transforms what is written into a 
quickening personal message ; where the finest pas- 
sages have in them a certain moral inertness, and 
where the element, however indefinable, which 
changes words into powers, and makes sentences 
surprise us with fine inspirations, is palpably wanting. 
And we see the same thing, often and sadly, in the 
character and career of accomplished, capable, per- 
haps brilliant men, who eagerly aspire, but who never 
achieve; whose influence is perceptibly limited and 
languid, as compared with their powers ; from whom 
society, after a time, ceases to expect anything more 
than a transient entertainment; whose age is 
shadowed with the deepening sense of practical fail- 
ure, and who finally pass out of the communities 
which they seemed adapted to invigorate and to 
guide, with no results and no remembrances to be the 
abiding memorial of them. 

In how many such instances does this word of 
Goethe come back to the thoughts : " Something is 
wanting. It is the Manly. Take note of the word, 
and underscore it. There is a lack of urgent power." 
And that lack is as fatal to genuine and fruitful 
human success as the want of fire beneath the boiler 
is to the movement of the system of mechanism of 
which that should be the throbbing heart. 

But, on the other hand, sometimes we see this, in 
rich, bright, superb exhibition ; in writings, in art 
works, in the temper of men, and in their illustrative 
public careers. I do not think it extravagant to say 
that this special element, of native, habitual, govern- 
ing manliness, was as marked in him of whom fitting 
memorials remind us to-day, as in any whom I have 

346 



MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR 

personally known. 1 It was this which, first attracted 
me to him when he and I were young together. It 
was this for which, in large measure, I afterward ad- 
mired and honored him ; and the image of him which 
rises before me, even as I speak, without the help of 
library or of portrait, bears this characteristic with 
indelible clearness stamped upon it. 

Dr. Washburn was a master of many knowledges 
and generous accomplishments; who impressed one 
with the natural dignity of his thought, and his easy 
command of abundant acquisitions. He was a man in 
whose mental faculty, as well as in his face and his phys- 
ical frame, a rare gracefulness was intimately asso- 
ciated with disciplined strength. He united much of 
the spirit of the poet with the faith of the Christian, 
the learning of the student, and the discursive reason 
of the philosopher. He had studied many subjects, 
and his thinking upon them was uniformly just, fresh, 
wide in range, nobly stimulating, while he could 
hardly express himself in any form of action or of 
speech without a certain romantic elegance in what- 
ever he did — attractive to all, delightful to his friends. 

But, beyond all this, he was preeminently a manly 
man ; who was true to his convictions, and determined 
by his sense of practical duty, whatever might happen ; 
who never shrank into silence, nor retreated into inglo- 
rious indolence, before any opposition ; whose spirit, 
indeed, grew more elate, as he was hindered, antago- 
nized, threatened ; who was most buoyantly sure of his 

1 On the day on which this Address was delivered, a portrait of Eev. 
Edward A. Washburn, D. D., was unveiled at Union College, in a 
library hall erected as a memorial of him, by members of Calvary 
Church, New York, and other friends. 

347 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

end when to the timid the last chance of success 
seemed to have vanished. It was this more than any- 
thing else — or this as ennobling everything else — 
which fitted him for the positions, sometimes as haz- 
ardous as they were eminent, to which he was called. 
It gave him large influence over minds hardly less 
discerning than his own, and spirits as resolute. It 
made his life an occasion of gladness to those who did 
not meet him often, or hear his sermons, but who knew 
him to be, in every, fiber, a faithful, fearless and conse- 
crated scholar. It is this for which he will long be 
remembered by those who stood near him ; which 
gives, for some of us, peculiar sacredness to the serv- 
ices of this day ; which makes the thought of meeting 
him again, in realms more fair and high and perma- 
nent than those which lie on this side death, our 
familiar and happy hope. 

" Crown him with gold," wrote one who had known 
him long and well, writing with affectionate admiration 
after his death : 

Crown him with gold, the kingly crown of gold ! 

Where is there one of statelier grace or mien ? 
That lofty soul uplifting young and old 

On wings of glorious thought to realms unseen ! 
What though his head lie low beneath the sod, 
He lives a king and priest before our God. 

Pausing for a little, then, under the suggestions of 
so high an example, I do not know that any subject can 
be more suitable to this brief address, or more likely 
to convey to us healthful impulse, than that to which 
our thoughts are by the occasion naturally turned: 
the beauty and power of thorough Manliness in the 
instructed American scholar. The duty of cherishing 

348 



MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR 

this in ourselves will hardly fail to become apparent ; 
and the usefulness of great institutions of learning, in 
so far as they minister to this in those whom they 
educate, will need no other vindication. The subject 
is ethical, as well as literary ; but it is not, therefore, 
the less adapted to an hour overshadowed, as to some 
of us this is, by affectionate recollections, or thronged, 
as it is to many others, with eager hopes and large 
expectations. 

The question is, of course, concisely to be answered : 
What is implied in such essential manliness of spirit ? 
What principal elements must combine in the temper 
of the scholar "to constitute and complete it ? And the 
answer is not far to find. 

Certainly, Courage is essentially involved, and no 
true manliness can be realized where this is not pres- 
ent : — courage, as denoting not merely that keen in- 
stinct of battle which displays itself in stimulating 
excitements, in the heat of contest, in the crisis which 
pushes one to self-vindication, or. in passionate cham- 
pionship of favorite opinions, but as representing what 
is ampler than this, and also finer : strength of heart ; 
strength to endure as well as attack, to pursue and 
achieve as well as to attempt, to sacrifice self alto- 
gether, if need be, on behalf of any controlling con- 
viction. A thorough consent of judgment, conscience, 
imagination, affection, all vitalized and active, with a 
certain invincible firmness of will, as the effect of such 
a consent— this is implied in a really abounding and 
masterful courage. It is not impatient. It is not 
imperious. It is not the creature of fractious 
and vehement will-power in man. It is never allied 
with a passionate selfishness. It is associated with 

349 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

great convictions, has its roots in profound moral ex- 
periences, is nourished by thoughts of God and the 
hereafter. It is as sensitive and gentle in spirit as it is 
persistent and highly resolved. It forms the base of 
sympathies, generosities, rather than of defiances. Its 
language is that of courtesy always, never of petulance, 
or of egotistic arrogance. A chivalric manner is natu- 
ral to it, especially toward those who are weak or 
alarmed — as natural as is his carol to the song-bird, or 
its interplay of colors to the flowering tulip. 

But though courteous, sympathetic, and ready for 
all genial affiliations, it is sufficient in itself, and quite 
independent of outward auxiliaries. Once established 
as an element of character, it is deepened and renewed 
with all experience. It is only compacted into more 
complete force before the shock of downright attack, 
and becomes supremely aspiring and confident when 
hostile forces rage against it. 

Such courage as this is everywhere at home, and is 
naturally master of all situations. Conspicuous on the 
battle-field, it may equally be shown in the journal or 
in the pulpit. It shines on the platform as clearly as 
in the senate; is as manifest in the frank and un- 
swerving announcement of principles which men hate, 
in the face of their hatred, as it is when the tempestu- 
ous winds, tearing the wave-tops into spoondrift, have 
caught the reeling ship in their clutch, and threaten to 
bury it in the deep. And wherever it is shown, it has 
in it something of the morally superlative. Men recog- 
nize a force which emergencies cannot startle, nor 
catastrophes overbear ; which possesses inexhaustible 
calmness and strength ; with which no intellectual 
faculties or acquired accomplishments can be com- 

350 



MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR 

pared, but from which all such take a value and 
splendor not their own. 

We know how history delights to turn from eloquent 
debates or picturesque pageants to present even partial 
portraits of this : as in the English soldier, biding the 
shock at Waterloo, wholly disdainful of the military 
science which declared him early and fatally beaten, 
unshaken in his spirit, and holding by that spirit his 
reeling standards to their perilous place, in spite of the 
tremendous assaults of artillery and cavalry which 
Napoleon hurled upon his rent and shattered squares ; 
or in prominent individual instances : as in William of 
Nassau, with treachery around him, a price on his head, 
a few divided provinces at his back, crowded almost 
literally into the sea, and clinging with hardly more 
than his finger-tips to the half -drowned land, yet front- 
ing, without one sense of fear or sign of hesitation, the 
utmost fury and force of Spain, though the armaments 
of that exasperated empire were pushed to their relent- 
less onset by the subtlety of Philip, the fierce energy 
of Alva, and the unwearied genius of Parma ; in the 
Wittenberg monk — the 400th anniversary of whose 
humble birth in the miner's cabin the world will recog- 
nize next November — going to the Diet with unfalter- 
ing step, though the veteran soldier told him as he 
passed that the pathway was more perilous than his 
own had been in the imminent deadly breach ; or in 
the venerable Malesherbes, volunteering his defense of 
the fore-doomed king before the frantic Convention at 
Paris, though perfectly knowing that that death by 
the guillotine which afterward overtook himself and 
his household must be the only reward of his devotion. 

Nothing else in biography or in history impresses 

351 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

us more than this sovereign courage ; assured, unyield- 
ing, without impetuosity, but ready for any service or 
sacrifice. It has been not unfrequently the infrangi- 
ble diamond-pivot on which destinies have turned. 
"Whether or not connected with consequences so large, 
in its own majesty, it lifts prosaic and commonplace 
pages above the level of rhythmic ethics. It makes 
us aware of the vast possibilities implied in our nature. 
It knits the man in whom its utter self-poise appears 
with whatever is freest and lordliest in the universe. 
No power is too brilliant, and none too rare, to need 
the combination of this with itself in order most pro- 
foundly to move us. And no matter what the defects 
of one's manner, or the obvious imperfections of his 
faculty or his knowledge, a man who shows this is, by 
right, a leader of his fellows, having in him the stuff 
of heroical supremacy. 

I think that the American people, as distinctly at 
least as any other, will always demand this in those who 
aspire to instruct and to guide them. Our ancestors 
were sailors, soldiers, explorers — men who worked 
hard, lived roughly, dared greatly, suffered without 
flinching, died without moan; who purchased with 
the sword, not with the pen, the liberties which they 
wrung from reluctant power, and who set a bloody 
sign-manual to the charters which many of them 
certainly were not able to read. The stern and 
salutary training of the nation, on a continent so long 
remote from the Old World, its severe education in 
physical hardship, in great and novel political enter- 
prise, in moral struggle, in vast and repeated military 
contest, has only confirmed this victorious element in 
the national spirit. 

352 



MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR 

It has come to be a sort of inherited virtue, as if 
mingled with the iron and fibrin of the blood ; and 
any scholar, however familiar with manifold knowl- 
edges, however apt and copious in speech, who has not 
this, who is timid in his convictions, vague and 
hesitant in their expression, unwilling to take risks on 
their behalf, who fears opposition, is fettered before 
difficulty, or is daunted in heart by vociferous resist- 
ance — will certainly here have lost his chance of moral 
leadership. He must be free of the times before he 
can mould them. If his spirit is one that others can 
master or scare into silence, he may dismiss the 
thought of any high function, as belonging to him, 
when he stands in front of difficult work, or amid the 
sharp conflicts of human opinion. 

But a second force needs to be combined with this 
to give a supreme manliness to the scholar. It is that 
which Goethe appears to have had more or less in 
mind in his word to Eckermann — the transfiguring 
force of Moral Energy : what the Greeks denoted, in 
part at least, by that great word which is one of our 
inheritances from them : the effective, almost creative 
force, which sets things in movement, which seizes 
great ends, invents new methods, masters and applies 
all sorts of instruments, and which works with unfail- 
ing and impelling enthusiasm, kindling and quickening 
as well as controlling whatsoever it touches. 

Courage, without this, is apt to be sluggish and 
unimpressive, like the Black Knight in " Ivanhoe " till 
his spirit has been aroused. But with this it becomes 
an electrifying power, which stirs individuals, in- 
vigorates communities ; which multiplies weight by 
swiftness of purpose into mighty momentum, and 
w 353 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

which sets not unfrequently a great mark upon his- 
tory. This, too, is cognate to a governing element in 
our national character, and ought to be developed in 
largest measure in those who would reach and move 
and lead the public mind. 

It is the spirit of practical, unfatiguable, almost 
coercive energy, which achieves the great physical 
works of the country; which tunnels the hills, and 
throws the causeways over the chasms ; which turns 
the waste into gardens, tears out the metals from 
beneath the imprisoning strata of rock, or rolls across 
the outstretch of prairies the golden billows of the 
harvest ; which builds great cities, on what a few 
generations since were lonely strands or dreary 
swamps, which unites them by stately avenues in the 
air, or which rebuilds them in wider extent and nobler 
beauty when the flame has swept them with desola- 
ting stroke. It is steadily carving the obdurate con- 
tinent into millions of happy homesteads, and is set- 
ting the nation physically forward toward the future 
for which the fathers hoped ; and it no more can be 
stayed, in the march of this immense achievement, 
than the rising of the tide can be checked or diverted 
by an army setting batteries against it. 

Those who founded this nation brought such an 
invincible energy with them, having gathered it from 
those whose heroical life was the matrix of their own 
— in Holland or England, in Sweden or France, or 
Protestant Germany. Nothing else would have 
pushed them in venturous shallops over seas that 
had hardly felt a keel. Nothing less would have 
enabled them, after they got here, to conquer the 
wilderness, to turn marshes to meadows, to harness 

354 



MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR 

and curb the turbulent streams, and to make the grass 
grow upon the mountains. The whole subsequent 
work of the nation has renewed this. The real value 
of our institutions lies, more than in anything else, in 
the tendency which belongs to them to nourish and 
diffuse such practical energy ; and though an increas- 
ing general luxury may do much, no doubt, to impede 
or impair it, and though unparalleled material suc- 
cesses may divert it from the principal moral and 
social ends which it ought to subserve, it is not 
hazardous to predict that it is to continue a character- 
istic integrant part in the essential spirit of the people. 
To the Courage beneath, it will add its factor of 
intensity and celerity. The two combined will con- 
stitute a prevalent national temper so positive and 
effective that even a continent as rich as this in natural 
advantages is not too noble to be its theater; that 
from it that continent shall take on itself a fresh 
renown. 

The scholar must realize a like energy in himself, 
of character, feeling, and masculine purpose, if he 
would fulfil any adequate mission in the communities 
which he may affect, and in the years which offer him 
opportunity. Otherwise, his work will be simply 
ornamental, or wholly superfluous : and society might 
be pardoned if at last it should do with him, in effect, 
what the Dey of Algiers is said to have done with the 
captured French poet, whose chiming jingles he could 
not understand, who was clearly unfit for either 
laborer or soldier, and for whom he could find no use 
whatever till he set him to braiding the plumage of 
birds into feather-tunics. 

It is the want of this rich and resolute moral energy 

355 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

which makes many astute and accomplished politicians 
entirely powerless among the plain people. They 
pretty much believe, but rather more doubt. They 
wait for the platform before defining their principles ; 
are afraid for their party, more afraid of their party ; 
and, lacking determining force in themselves, they get 
no sure and governing hold on the public intelligence. 
Their occasional successes are as absolutely a matter 
of mechanics as the making of buttons. With all 
their adroitness, all their assiduity, and in spite of the 
frequent brilliance of their speech, they slip toward 
oblivion, as the rocket-stick wavers noiselessly earth- 
ward from the air which it promised for a moment to 
enlighten. 

It is this want which, more frequently, I think, than 
anything else, deprives the cultivated preacher of re- 
ligion of any such commanding power as belonged to 
the men, less largely instructed, but more stalwart in 
spirit, who made pulpits famous half a century ago. 
"I myself also am a Man," said the apostle to the 
Roman centurion. He said it in humility, not in 
pride, but with a practical sense, no doubt, of all that 
it implied. And if one cannot say it after him, in the 
broadest significance, it is plain that he, at any rate, is 
not in succession from that primate of the Church. 
It is the want of such virile energy which often makes 
diligent students and dexterous writers as entirely in- 
effective when great interests are at stake, and sharp 
issues are being decided, as their walking-sticks would 
be in the rush and clash of a cavalry charge. 

We have had instances, on the other hand, of the 
power which comes with such incessant and masterful 
energy, abundant and signal in our own history. We 

356 



MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR 

have seen them abroad, in perhaps yet more impressive 
exhibition. Dr. Arnold, among educators, gave 
almost the superlative example of this force, in deli- 
cate yet robust development. His pupil and biogra- 
pher, whose name adds a charm even to Westminster 
Abbey, had caught it from him ; and it glows through 
the writings, as it glowed through the life, of the be- 
loved and honored Dean Stanley, like fire glowing in 
molten steel. The two great leaders of English po- 
litical thought and action, on the liberal side, in recent 
times — Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone— have had in 
such exuberant energy of purpose the real scepter of 
their strength. In a development perhaps narrower 
and more selfish, but not less intense, of this vehement 
force, stinging in sarcasm, flashing into epigram, 
keeping every faculty always at its height, making 
him daring in invention, insolent in attack, unsubdu- 
able in defeat, lay one chief secret of the enigmatical 
and fascinating power of him whose hold on the Eng- 
lish imagination gave him a place so high and unique 
in English history — the Oriental dandy, novelist and 
prime minister, Lord Beaconsfield. 

It is certain that no man in this country, with the 
turbulent elements swirling around him, and in the 
times which wait before him, will be of real and 
widening power, or of service to the welfares which 
he ought to subserve, in whom this force of a system- 
atic and conquering energy does not appear. 

And it comes only — or comes, at least, in fullest ex- 
hibition, and comes to stay — to him whose life is 
passed among books, and whose habit is of reflection 
and inquiry, from great convictions: in which the 
whole personal life of the soul finds exhilarating lib- 

357 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

erty and unfailing motive and by which it is pushed 
to the utmost exertion of every power to make what 
to it is regal in thought, supreme and shining to other 
minds. Thus, only, one achieves a clear independence 
of the shifting opinions which play back and forth in 
the air of society, as clouds across the summer day, 
with an equal independence of malign opposition, or of 
vicissitudes of fortune. He has secure freedom, and 
vital inspiration, within himself. 

There is, of course, an evanescent excitement of 
feeling produced by picturesque novelties in doctrine, 
which for the moment engage the fancy, and are 
counted as true because they are novel. They are the 
iron-pyrites of opinion, essentially worthless, though 
glittering almost like golden flakes. There is some- 
times a vivid enthusiasm, not always lasting, but 
fervid and quickening while it continues, which is 
generated in men by their eager apprehension of what 
to them appears justified in thought, though it has no 
hold on the permanent and general conviction of man- 
kind. Their fondness for it becomes more passionate 
because it is an outcast from other men's minds, and 
their championship has a special earnestness because 
their conviction about it is singular. The advocates 
of new things, the deniers of the old, in religion or 
philosophy; in ethics, art, or social science, often show ■ 
this impulse ; and it is not to be reckoned a thing of 
no consequence. It not unfrequently contributes 
largely to the impact of their opinions, however fan- 
tastic, upon the minds which they address. 

But still the old are the living and magisterial 
truths — old as the race, and still as un wasted in their 
spiritual supremacy as is the sunshine by all the eyes 

358 



MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR 

which have felt its blessing, as is the atmosphere by 
all the transient noisy concussions which have startled 
its echoes. Among them are two, which are plainly 
preeminent as sources of personal independence in 
man, and of that unfaltering moral energy which is 
the essential secret of power. In order to gain these, 
one needs the assurance, fundamental in his mind, of 
the dignity of Man's nature, of the rights which be- 
long to it, of the properly subordinate relation to its 
development of all institutions, of the unbounded fu- 
tures waiting for it. He needs as well, as in fact the 
basis of the other, an equally clear and exalting con- 
viction of the being, the character, the authority of 
God, and of those affiliations of thought and spirit in 
which the imperfect human soul may stand toward 
him in immortal alliance. A man in whom these 
convictions are cardinal, always present, always ex- 
alting, is free of chance and change and combat. He 
has supremacy of expectation and enterprise in his own 
soul. In one sense, at least, he has entered the per- 
fect law of liberty; and no allurements, and no at- 
tacks, can limit his independence, emasculate his cour- 
age, or rob him of the fulness of an intrepid and 
sovereign energy. 

I call your attention the more gladly to this, be- 
cause there are influences now actively at work to dis- 
credit in men's minds these principal truths ; perhaps 
to wholly displace them from the primacy which they 
long have held in the best human thought. Agnos- 
ticism affirms the true knowledge of God a thing un- 
attainable. His personality is to it an unproved 
hypothesis. It feels force, recognizes order, and 
formulates law ; but the God of the Hebrew and the 

359 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

Christian faith it knows nothing about, since no lenses 
discern Him, and no chemical reagents bring out to 
exhibition on the palimpsest of nature the distinct in- 
scriptions of His divine hand. Miracles, therefore, 
it sets wholly aside. Providence is a dream of the 
fanciful. Prayer has its efficacy in the impression 
which it leaves on the supplicating heart. The Bible 
is the accredited literature of half -civilized tribes, as- 
sociating the utterances of many devout, but often 
mistaken, human minds, to which our age owes no 
allegiance ; and the Church is simply a social institu- 
tion, for pleasant assemblages, for ethical culture, per- 
haps for the exercise and discipline of taste, or the 
furtherance of humane and educational enterprise. 
The supernatural, on this scheme, is eliminated from 
the sphere of human thought ; and even the natural 
loses meaning and majesty by ceasing to be connected 
with that. 

So Man, as well, is displaced from that spiritual rank 
in the creation which the sacred books of Christendom 
recognize. His nature is regarded as evolved from 
the brutal ; mind coming out of matter, and conscious- 
ness being developed by chemical action, without the 
intervening energy of God. Conscience is not of di- 
vine inspiration, but the summary product of human 
experience. Responsibility to a divine government is 
reckoned a shadowy legend of the past, or a dreary 
dream of morbid minds. Immortality itself becomes, 
at most, a doubtful hypothesis — " a grand perchance." 

I am not now concerned with either of these recent 
fashions of thinking, save as they stand in one relation. 
But it seems as plain as are the stars on an unclouded 
night that either or both of them — and they are essen- 

360 



MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR 

tially intimately connected — will dry the sources, and 
stay the strength, of that masterful freedom and moral 
energy which the scholars of our time eminently need. 
Certainly, if history has any lesson pertinent to the 
subject, it indicates this. The faith which faced the 
dungeon and flame, and the Libyan panther, without 
flinching or fear, had no agnostic element in it. The 
heroic endeavor, and more heroic endurance, which 
conquered the Roman empire to the cross, which after- 
ward curbed, and finally converted to rich enthusi- 
asms, the awful frenzy of the ages that followed ; 
which, by missionary sacrifice never equalled in the 
world, enlightened, tamed and transformed barba- 
rians, making Christian peoples out of the vagrant, 
painted savages, your ancestors and mine ; which built 
cathedrals, universities, hospitals, and gave to Europe 
its character and its culture — these were not founded 
upon doubts about God, or on mean and ignoble con- 
ceptions of Man. Their inspiration was in the peren- 
nial and paramount truths of both the Testaments. 
Men like us in nature, and often not surpassing our 
endowment of power, accomplished these stupendous 
achievements, because liberated in will from all fear of 
the world, and energized in spirit, as by a celestial in- 
flux of force, through their lofty conception of that 
which was above them, of that which was before them. 
Their relationship to the recognized Government of 
the Universe set them free from subjection to earthly 
restrictions. Their impression of the dignity of that 
nature in man which had been created by the In- 
finite Majesty to share the divine immortality, and 
for which the Son of God had appeared, inspired 
endeavors on behalf of that nature by which ages 

361 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

became illustrious, of the fruit of which we hourly 
partake. 

We cannot be mistaken in attributing to these su- 
perlative ideas, which the mission of the Master had 
lifted before men into glorious ascendency, that might 
of the spirit which set Ambrose against Theodosius in 
unbending supremacy ; which made Bernard the coun- 
selor of Pontiffs, yet the champion of the poor, the de- 
fender of the Jew ; which nerved Huss and Savonarola 
to wear, without shrinking, the ruby crown. Such 
men might differ at many points. But they all were 
conscious of their sovereign relations to God and to 
eternity. They swung clear of the world by their hold 
on the supernal certainties. They flung their life into 
the service to which the times called them, with a pas- 
sionate yet a persistent abandon which we poorly emu- 
late, because they had clearly apprehended the God of 
psalmists and prophets and illustrious apostles, and 
also the Man whose ideal was, as well as his redemp- 
tion, in Jesus of Nazareth. 

If such impressions fade from the minds of those 
who should be leaders among us in moral enterprise 
and in educating thought, the loss will be a vast one. 
We shall still, no doubt, have swifter vehicles than 
those in which our fathers rode, vaster ships, presses 
more rapid, looms more productive, factories more fre- 
quent, and wires for the fleeter transmission of 
thought. But the height of the moral inspiration and 
freedom which broke on the world when the advent 
of Christ set God and man in celestial discovery, we 
shall not reach. The scholars now going forth from 
our colleges, no matter with what accomplishments of 
learning, or graces of manner, or admirable natural 

362 



MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR 

mental endowments, will miss the ennobling and lib- 
erating force from which, those whom they follow took 
sublimity. They will do little work, in their various 
communities, involving the higher energies of the soul, 
or which the world will care to remember. Society 
will master them, and not be uplifted or moulded by 
them ; and that sway of the spirit, to which all studies 
should contribute, and in which is the ultimate hope 
of the world, will pass from them to become the in- 
heritance of others nobler. 

I have no real fear that this is to be. Certainly, if 
it come, it will show us morally the meanest of the 
peoples on whom the great disciplines of history have 
been tried. On a continent where the bright marvels 
of Providence confront our vision, almost as if grouped 
in zodiacal constellations, in a nation whose life has 
involved from the outset the majestic conception of 
what is the native prerogative of man, we may antici- 
pate that these efficacious and emancipating ideas will 
continue in lucid eminence before men; that the 
scholar, especially, will find in them the full liberty of 
his spirit, the fervor of an unconquerable impulse, the 
fulness of an inexhaustible energy. What the love 
of art was to the Athenian, whose fathers had loved 
it, whose exquisite language was alive with its images, 
and on whose plastic and sensitive childhood had fallen 
its impressions ; what love of empire was to the Ro- 
man, whose annals had traced the expansion of do- 
minion from the hills on the Tiber to the Pillars of 
Hercules and the Euphrates, and who saw in his tri- 
umphs the Northern furs, with amber from the Baltic, 
intermixed with Greek marbles, and ivory ornaments 
from Asia and the South ; what love of letters has 

363 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

been to large communities of men, love of glory to 
others, or love of localities to those whose affections 
cling tenaciously to the passes and pinnacles and shout- 
ing torrents among the Alps — that, the sense of Man's 
imperial place amid the immensities, and of the im- 
mutable majesty of Him who now as of old, " judgeth 
in the earth," should be to the leaders in American 
thought ; what the public mind holds in silent solu- 
tion, being crystallized in them into brilliant examples. 

If this shall be so, then in these great elements will 
be found the source for every scholar of a courage that 
will not faint or pale before any emergency ; of the 
moral energy which gives natural leadership. He who 
shall show them, being at the same time ripened in 
taste, cultivated in faculty, equipped with learning, by 
the ministry of these schools, with ampler knowledges 
open to his grasp than ever before have been accessi- 
ble, with a wider field on which to work, with more 
effective instruments for his use, and with grandest 
welfares soliciting his service — he will be surely the 
favorite child of civilization. Such manliness as his is 
the regal force in human society ; by which we meas- 
ure all that affects it, from which society takes grace 
and renown. 

We honor the Hellenic centuries, not so much for 
the fact that from them came poems, statues, temples, 
unsurpassed in the world, festive spectacles, stately 
squares, which we cannot rival, philosophies and his- 
tories which still stand before us as the Parthenon 
stood amid its surroundings of splendid grace; but 
more for the fact that, under the influences prevalent 
in them, Aristides was possible, whom Plato honored 
as singular among great men ; Socrates, the undaunted 

364 



MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR 

John the Baptist of the ethnic religions ; or Pericles, 
that man of a majestic intelligence, whom defeat could 
not master, rebellion frighten, nor sorrow shake, nor 
plague dismay. We accept it as the glory of the 
Eoman civilization, not that it won vast military 
victories on sea and land, and celebrated those victo- 
ries with magnificent ceremonial ; not that it produced 
the poems of Yirgil, the artful and musical odes of 
Horace, the ethics of Seneca, the eloquence of Cicero, 
or the sad majesty of the annals of Tacitus ; but that 
it gave the real though the imperfect examples of a 
sovereign manliness, in Brutus or Cato, in Epictetus or 
Antoninus. 

If, in our times, a similar but completer spiritual 
mastery is shown in those whom our colleges train, 
these times will also have a great place in history. 
Nothing else on the continent will be comparable to 
that supreme moral force, and to the work — devout 
and humane — in which it is expressed. It is well, no 
doubt, that we have mountains higher than the Alps, 
and lakes holding half the fresh water of the planet, 
and cataracts capable of driving the machinery for in- 
numerable millions ; that we have vast savannahs, and 
Yosemite valleys, ledges sparkling when they are split 
with wealths beyond all dreams of the East, and 
prairies, whose soils look to European eyes like fabri- 
cations of the laboratory, yet across whose bounteous 
breadth of verdure the eagle himself can hardly fly 
without strengthening plasters on both his wings. 
All these are well : our national endowment of mate- 
rial wealth, opening the rich and unmeasured oppor- 
tunities which we have not more than half discovered. 
But the moral is greater than the material ; the spirit 

365 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

than the instrument with which it works ; the char- 
acter than the circumstances which furnish its setting. 
And the man of wide culture, in whom a free and sur- 
passing moral force matches his faculty, ennobles his 
knowledge, and crowns his accomplishments, will be 
grander than all this opulence of equipment. What- 
soever has been best in civilization will have come in 
him to consummation; and every University which 
has helped its students toward that attainment will 
have brought therein its richest reward to the faith 
which founded it, to the ceaseless generosities which 
have given it expansion, to the wisdom and forecast 
and faithful fervor with which its affairs have been ad- 
ministered. 

Young Gentlemen, now going forth from these halls, 
or tarrying in them to still further advance your studies : 
a voice from a verdant grave at St. Johhland has 
seemed to bid me speak as I have done. One in 
whom that which I have roughly and rapidly outlined 
was at least partially realized, has, in fact, addressed 
you. I would take to my own heart the lesson which 
thus is commended to yours, and would feel for my- 
self that this imperative Manliness — fine in fiber, but 
unyielding in force, which makes one sympathetic with 
others, yet independent of them, superior to vicissitudes, 
self-poised and temperate amid all oppositions, with 
every purpose undisturbed, and every power in easy 
play, though passion assail him, and the times repulse and 
reject his impression — that this is really the prime req- 
uisite for every scholar who would use his opportu- 
nity to the noblest advantage ; that a conscientious, yet 
a thoroughly impassioned moral energy must supple- 
ment this ; and that both will find the supplies of 

366 



MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR 

their strength in the undecaying and governing con- 
ceptions of God in his majesty, and of Man in his im- 
mortal relations. The amplest learning, the most bril- 
liant dexterity in logical play, the biggest brain, 
weigh light as punk if these essential moral powers 
are not present. A humbler force associated with 
them becomes transfigured, and rains reviving inspira- 
tion upon men. The admiration which men give to 
decorated speech, to graceful fancy, to gifts of song or 
tricks of wit, is as nothing to the honor which they 
pay instinctively to this royalty in the spirit, by 
which they are exalted, refreshed, reenf orced ; on 
which they rest with grateful satisfaction in the hour 
of public doubt and peril; from which they take, in 
every time, impressions most deep and most abiding. 

May it be the glory of our civilization that this is 
realized in largest measure in many among us ; that 
here examples, more numerous and more signal than 
have elsewhere been shown, are presented to the 
world, of those whom schools and colleges have 
trained, to whom sciences have been opened, and 
wealthy literatures in many languages, but who, above 
all, represent, in the temper which animates their life, 
the glorious courage and unresting energy, springing 
from the impulse of immortal convictions, by which 
power is consecrated, life made exultant, influence 
crowned. 

May this institution do its full share, in the future 
as in the past, for such a result ; and when we come 
to review our life, from the point where time for us is 
ending, may we feel, each one, that, however humble 
our place has been, and however limited our acquisi- 
tions, we have, in spirit, matched the work to which 

367 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

we were called ; that we have been faithful, fearless, 
free ; we have done with our might what our hands 
found to do, especially when it was dangerous or 
hard ; and that we have, therefore, won our right in 
the successive victorious ranks of those whom the 
world may not remember, but from whom in their 
life it took the impressions, at once salutary and 
strong, which can come only from the resolute, inspir- 
ing and inestimable service of Manly Scholars. 



368 



VIII 

THE BROADER RANGE AND OUTLOOK 
OF MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 



An Address delivered at Amherst College, June 28, 1887, at the 
Semi-centennial Celebration of the Amherst Chapter of the Alpha 
Delta Phi Fraternity. 



VIII 

THE BROADER, RANGE AND OUTLOOK 
OF MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 



Me. President, Brothers of Alpha Delta Phi, 
Ladies and Gentlemen : 
An. institution like this, whose annual commence- 
ment attracts and greets us, has its peculiar indwell- 
ing life, which ever freshly reveals itself through the 
constant impulse to expansion and growth. Depart- 
ments of study are added one by one to those which 
had preceded, while each of those before established 
seeks to afford wider instruction, with more exact 
training ; new teachers are added, more fit and ade- 
quate apparatus of instruction is diligently sought and 
considerately supplied, and the whole scheme of study 
becomes more practical and more generous, aiming to 
meet continually wider and finer needs, and to furnish 
to prepared and inquisitive minds a completer supply 
of what they seek of training and of truth. This is 
the law of such institutions, only in fulfilling which 
do they show themselves worthy of honor or of main- 
tenance ; in the absence of cordial obedience to which 
they become inevitably, after a little, groups of 
sparsely occupied buildings covering acres which the 
plough might more usefully traverse. The vigor, 
abundance and fruitfulness of the life of any college 

371 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

are manifested and measured by the changes which 
progressively take place in the courses and methods 
of its instruction, and in the physical structures and 
instruments through which it imparts this. There- 
fore it always needs liberal friends, and an ampler 
endowment ; and the time never comes when it can 
say that its desires are answered, its equipment is 
complete. 

It is not, therefore, an occasion of surprise when we 
return here to find that enlargements and alterations, 
manifold and conspicuous, have taken place in our ab- 
sence ; and if we look back, as some of us to-day do, 
over a term of fifty years since the infant chapter of 
our fraternity found here its incipient life and early 
cradle, we expect to discover, upon recalling that long- 
ago, that the changes accomplished and still going on 
have made almost another college of that with which 
we were familiar. The same skies are above us, 
effulgent in the dawn with sunrise lights which we 
used to see or shiveringly to watch for at six in the 
morning, resplendent at sunset with a glory which none 
of us has seen surpassed, amid whatever ethereal charm 
or purple glow of Italy itself. The same landscape is 
before us, rimmed with hills, but stretching far out- 
ward toward the west, now rich with verdure, blazing 
in autumn in the vast vestment of many colors, while 
always lovely in its modulated lines, with the reflected 
flash of waters touching it at points with sparkling 
shimmer. Some of the same buildings are here, tarry- 
ing, perhaps, beyond what those who have to use them 
conceive the fitness of things to require, but connect- 
ing the college as now presented, through somewhat 
rude and rusty links, with the college as it was, while 

372 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

making us all glad to know that the law of progress, 
elsewhere so effective, has undergone no final suspense 
before their ancient and homely walls ; and the same 
village, though far more beautiful, is around us now 
that was here when as boys we trod these streets, 
were lodged, perhaps, in some of these houses, strolled 
over these fields, or took, it may be, our private spin 
— very private ! — behind whatever horses could be 
hired, on the neighboring roads. 

These remain; but in almost everything which 
directly pertains to the college, the scene is one of 
transformation. One professor continues here — long 
may he continue ! — under whom some of us ploughed 
our way through parts of Livy, or grappled the con- 
densed martial sentences, with the tone of tragic 
battle in them, of the great master Tacitus, or caught 
some swift and inspiriting glimpse of Attic philosophy, 
eloquence, poetry, story. All the others have passed 
from the scenes in which they were to us at the time 
illustrious persons, and their places are filled by others. 
Different buildings, another chapel, a new library, a 
new observatory, a new and splendid gymnasium are 
before us ; and the physical apparatus of instruction is 
widely diverse from that with which those of us who 
have passed our threescore years, and are rapidly com- 
pleting the supplementary ten, were formerly familiar. 
The change has not been startlingly rapid in its par- 
ticulars, but it has been persistent, continuous, general, 
and we may hope that it has been prophetic ; that 
other changes are to follow, as needful as these, and 
yet more wide. It is a fact always impressive, and 
one which lifts our thoughts forward with spontaneous 
impulse on an occasion like this, that such an institu- 

373 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

tion counts scores of years as in personal life we count 
the months ; that classes coming and classes going are 
but recurring incidents in its history, and that to its 
incorporeal life the century is not long. 

The most significant change of all which we observe 
has been in the broader scope and the fresh elasticity 
given to the courses of study pursued here, with the 
more various and large opportunity systematically 
offered for a more comprehensive and elaborate train- 
ing than in our time was proposed or was possible. 
The. college remains a college for training, not aspiring 
to become a university, which in its intent represents 
a universal cyclopaedia of knowledge, housed in libra- 
ries, but supposed to be also vitally incorporate, and 
the more accessible because peripatetic, in a multitude 
of teachers. Such an institution has, beyond question, 
important advantages; but this is not such an one. 
Its purpose is, as it was at the beginning, to discipline 
men in the use of their powers, while opening to them 
inviting opportunities for profitable study, in large 
part now along lines of inquiry which they select. 
But the variety of these lines of study is far more 
abundant and attractive than it was, and the develop- 
ing life of the college has been shown in this direction 
almost more distinctly than in any other. 

"When some of us were here as students, a half- 
century ago, the courses of training were all arranged 
with reference to the professional studies, in law or 
medicine, or especially in theology, which it was im- 
plicitly assumed were to follow. Even as so planned 
and maintained they were meager, restricted, sharply 
mandatory. We had, of course, Latin and Greek, 
grammatically taught, till some of us wished that re- 

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MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

publican Rome had never existed, and that the Persians 
had conquered Greece. We had mathematics, which 
to many were a weariness to spirit and mind, as well 
as to the flesh. "We had more or less of natural science, 
as then understood ; something of philosophy, with 
dear Dr. Brown's mellifluous lectures on the human 
mind for our principal text-book ; something, no doubt, 
of instruction in ethics, though I cannot remember 
what author was expected to serve as our enlightening 
guide and friend. We had moderate courses in rhetoric 
and logic, and a very slight smattering of French. 
Besides these, I do not remember anything of im- 
portance in the field of survey opened to us. We had 
no German, Italian or Spanish ; no history ; very little, 
if anything, of political economy ; no instruction in 
art ; no leadership into the life of the Old World and 
the secrets of its renown, and no elective studies what- 
ever. The grooves were definite and constrictive, and 
we were to move along them as we might, looking out 
at the end, as I have suggested, on one or other of the 
three professions toward which the college was to 
open the way. 

From that to this the change is apparent, of large 
reach, and of radical importance. Now I observe that 
German, French, Italian, Spanish are systematically 
taught ; that opportunity is offered for an initial study 
of Sanskrit — that prolific other- world matrix from 
which the whole family of the languages popularly 
known as Indo-European trace their descent; that 
English literature and the English language, back to 
the Anglo-Saxon times, have prominent places in the 
curriculum; that philosophy, both intellectual and 
moral, is far more extensively and profoundly ex- 

I 375 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

pounded ; that biology takes its place with geology 
and chemistry; that the recent art collections — pre- 
senting copies of statues and groups of sculpture from 
the best Greek and Roman periods, of the frieze of 
the Parthenon, of the Olympian Hermes and Yictory, 
of the bronze Gates of Ghiberti, " worthy to be the 
gates of Paradise " — become the occasion for illustra- 
tive lectures ; that the life and literature of the mag- 
nificent ancient peoples are set forth in picturesque 
portraiture for those who seek to master their lan- 
guages; that the great medieval Latin hymns are 
brought under appreciative review ; best of all, per- 
haps, that the library, which in our time was a place 
for preserving, in security, no doubt, but in utter 
secrecy, any book which had drifted into it from a 
clergyman's shelves, now contains nearly fifty thou- 
sand volumes, most of them freshly selected, in all 
departments of study, and is still steadily increasing. 
Meantime, the new and superb gymnasium gives op- 
portunity and constant incentive to a graceful and fin- 
ished physical culture ; and history appears, the true 
preserver and mistress of knowledges, established in a 
principal place among elective studies from the begin- 
ning of the junior year onward. 

No one, I am sure, will question the wisdom of 
changes like these, or will fail to be grateful for the 
successive gifts and endowments which have rendered 
them possible, as no one, either, can fail to see to what 
a vastly widened outlook for the effect of college- 
training such changes and expansions point. Where 
it was the rigorous aim to train men for one of the 
three professions then called "learned," the object 
now evidently is to give the more liberal, many-sided 

376 « 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

instruction, which shall fit men for useful, happy and 
illuminated lives, in any department of future activity, 
professional, educational, editorial, artistic, or com- 
mercial, social and domestic. To accustom men to 
right methods of study, and to form in them the habit 
of pursuing such methods, thus starting them fairly on 
their courses of independent inquiry, while giving 
them just and liberal views of the changing thought 
and life of the world, that they may be more culti- 
vated persons wherever afterward they may live, and 
whatever work they may accept — this is now the pur- 
pose of the college. It is a wise and beautiful pur- 
pose, which must command the approval of all. In a 
constantly increasing multitude of persons, through- 
out widening circles, life will be silently but gener- 
ously enriched by the studies here pursued. In all 
walks of life, and not only in the professions, those 
will appear who feel themselves owing a debt of grati- 
tude to the text-books and the teachers from whom 
they received early guidance with an energetic and 
continuing impulse. 

Let me illustrate this somewhat more distinctly, by 
noticing the peculiar and permanent benefits of that 
study of history which, as I said, was here formerly 
wholly ignored, but which now has a place so promi- 
nent and constant sympathetically assigned to it. 
This special instance will, perhaps, present as clearly 
as any, both the extent and the benefit of the change 
which has here taken place. 

Of course the recorded annals of mankind cannot 
be exhibited, can hardly be sketched in more than 
vague outline, by the most accomplished and diligent 
teacher, in the term of two years. But the great 

377 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

periods in history can be distinguished ; the places of 
some eminent persons in its inter-connected though 
complex development can be fairly indicated, and the 
general trend of the forces which it shows, in particu- 
lar ages or in the whole far-spreading progress, can be 
clearly set forth. What is better still, those who enter 
on the study can have their taste for it cherished, can 
learn the rewarding methods of inquiry, can be as- 
sisted to a fairly critical judgment of authors, and be 
distinctly set upon the path toward wider, finer and 
more exact knowledge to be subsequently gained ; and 
these are effects important in themselves, while alive 
with promise, which will make any two years of study 
of memorable value. 

The mind is always expanded and liberalized by 
what puts distant lands and times, with the exacting 
and disciplinary experiences of one's own ancestors or 
of other peoples, distinctly before it. To a certain 
extent foreign travel does this, as it sets the immeas- 
urably wider expanses, filled with energetic and labor- 
ious life, in contrast with the narrower scenes with 
which one before had been familiar ; and he who has 
stood with any thoughtfulness amid the crowded im- 
mensities of London, an empire in itself; who has 
looked through curious whirls of reminiscence upon 
the ancient streets of Paris or its stately boulevards, 
or who has followed the Unter den Linden from the 
Schloss to the Brandenburg Gate; before whom 
Munich, Vienna, Yenice, Florence, Naples, Milan, 
Madrid, have opened their treasures, to whom Kome 
has appeared, across the Campagna, a city ascending 
out of the past, but with the dome of later date roof- 
ing the throne of its existing empire of souls — such a 

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man can never again be in mind, in range of thought, 
in intellectual sympathy, what he was before the 
broadening experience. It is thus that the easier 
modern modes of foreign travel become educational, 
and that those are multiplying in all our communities 
who have been essentially widened in view, by their 
acquaintance with other lands, for the contemplation 
of proximate questions. The parish period has almost 
disappeared from even our. popular mental develop- 
ment. 

But history, when carefully studied — studied as it 
should be, with maps, topographic plans, careful itin- 
eraries, photographs of monuments or of sites — does 
the same thing for the home-keeping student, and does 
it in some important respects in a yet freer and bolder 
fashion. Egypt, Greece, Assyria, Persia, the scanty 
and rugged strip of Palestine from which influences 
have come to regenerate the world, India, China, the 
vast outstretch of Eussia, from lands of the olive and 
the fig, the pomegranate and the palm, to the lands of 
the frozen mammoth and the midnight sun — we may 
not traverse these in our journeying, unless we give 
our life to the business, but they come before us in the 
intelligent study of history, in panoramic breadth, 
with photographic distinctness. The centuries of the 
past present themselves in perspective. "We see the 
vast cosmical movements from which states have been 
born, in which subsequent civilizations took rise, and 
in which the devout mind discovers silent procedures 
of Providence. We learn how far removed from us 
were initial influences that are now flowing into re- 
sults, and how our life is affected at this hour by 
political combinations and military collisions which 

379 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

preceded by ages the invasion of England by the 
Normans or the splendid schemes of Charlemagne. 

It is quite impossible that one who reads with com- 
prehensive attention, till this immense and vital pic- 
ture is in a measure opened before him, should not be 
consciously broadened in thought, expanded even in 
mental power ; that he should not freshly and deeply 
feel how limited is his individual sphere ; how local, 
although multiplied by endowments from the past, are 
his personal opportunities ; what a vast scheme it is 
which is being evolved through stir of discussion, rush 
of emigration, competitions of industries, crash of con- 
flict, by the power which gives its unity to history, 
and which is perpetually educing great harmonies out 
of whatever seeming discords. An influence of the 
same kind descends upon one in the review of geologic 
periods, or in the contemplation of that stupendous 
celestial architecture which shows the infinitesimal 
minuteness of the spinning globe on which we live. 
But the influence of the study of historical life, crown- 
ing the planet with the mystery and majesty of per- 
sonal forces in long career, makes always a keener ap- 
peal to our consciousness, while it inevitably associates 
itself, by natural impulse, with those sublime scientific 
speculations which trace the fire-mist as it rounds into 
a world, and which show the universe, in the immeas- 
urable coordination of its physical forms under the 
rule of harmonious laws, a house of beauty for beauti- 
ful souls. 

Not merely a general expansion of thought, and, one 
may say, of the compass of the mind, comes with this 
larger study of history. It trains directly, with vigor- 
ous force, in fine proportion, each chief intellectual 

380 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

faculty. In this respect it is often misconceived by 
those who regard it as a pleasant exercise, to be pursued 
at one's leisure, but not to be reckoned on as imparting 
to the mind elastic vigor, any fresh robustness and 
alertness of power, or any refined capacity of percep- 
tive insight. Of course the memory will be trained, 
perhaps all will admit, by the effort to hold distant 
periods and persons distinctly in view ; to keep epochs, 
and the movements which marked them, from be- 
coming confused and entangled in thought ; and to 
recall, without reference to books, the points at which 
tendencies affecting subsequent centuries slowly or 
suddenly became apparent, or at which important 
tributary influences came in to reinforce them. But 
beyond the memory, it often is doubted if history 
offers any energetic or symmetrical discipline to the 
mind which pursues it. On the other hand, it seems 
too evident to be questioned that the vigilant, analytic 
and reconciling judgment, by which we separate things 
that differ, and harmonize and associate things that 
agree, however unlike in outward show ; by which we 
extricate the governing forces beneath phenomena, 
and set in their historic synthesis the individual 
designs and the public aspirations which cooperate 
in movements of general importance — that this 
noble power is essentially trained, as it is certainly 
constantly exercised, in any true study of history. 
I think that many present will agree that for them- 
selves no other form of mental practice has had 
closer relation to such an intimatp and enduring 
effect ; and I am quite satisfied that in either of the 
professions, in journalism, in educational work, or in 
the simply private life of an educated citizen, this 

381 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

effect will appear ; that one accustomed to wide and 
searching historical inquiries will be more expert in 
judging of urgent practical questions presented to- 
day, and will have a more discerning apprehension of 
the forces working to modify legislation and to mould 
society — forces which are often more formidable, or 
more replete with victorious energy, because subtle 
and occult. 

It seems to me plain, too, that the intuitive moral 
reason to which the most conspicuous action must give 
its account, and by which its character is interpreted 
and adjudged, which puts a candid estimate upon 
motives, and sets whatever historic achievement pre- 
sents itself for review in fair connection with special 
environments of time or of place, must here find as 
fruitful activity, as systematic and quickening a nur- 
ture, as in any department of human research ; and 
that the historical imagination — which of course does 
not rank with the creative imagination of the poet, 
but which is surely akin to that, and perhaps not less 
capable of giving incitement and beautiful pleasure in 
common experience — that this has such impulse and 
sustenance in the study of the past as cannot be fur- 
nished anywhere else. So it is that many of the as- 
piring and superior minds which have wrought in 
letters have taken this study for their own, and have 
by their successes in it made the world of readers 
their grateful debtors. The " personal equation " has 
continually appeared among them, in their judgment 
of motives, of movements, and of men ; but in order 
to form any judgment at all, which the discerning 
would respect, they have had to cultivate moral insight, 
as well as a discursive and commanding intelligence. 

382 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

Records of the centuries, buried in the crypts of 
archives and libraries, have had to yield up to the sur- 
vey of their genius living forms ; vanished times have 
had to be reconstructed by their thought, in their out- 
ward phenomena, and their constitutive moral and so- 
cial forces ; the manifold sensibilities, desires, passions, 
which belong to our nature, have had to be recognized, 
and their operation in public affairs to be patiently 
exhibited, while the impressions of peoples on each 
other have filled to the edge the crowded canvas. 

No teachers, therefore, have done more than these 
to educate broadly the ethical and the mental faculty 
in those whom they addressed, and before whom they 
unrolled the immense panorama of action, passion, 
collision, catastrophe, in the story of nations, with the 
energies exerted at critical points by particular per- 
sons, the deeper and more controlling power belong- 
ing to tendencies. It is strictly true, what Macaulay 
said : " He [who reads history] learns to distinguish 
what is local from what is universal ; what is transi- 
tory from what is eternal; to discriminate between 
exceptions and rules ; to trace the operation of dis- 
turbing causes ; to separate the general principles, 
which are always true and everywhere applicable, 
from the accidental circumstances with which in every 
community they are blended, and with which, in an 
isolated community, they are confounded by the most 
philosophical mind. Hence it is that in generaliza- 
tion the writers of modern times have far surpassed 
those of antiquity. The historians of our own coun- 
try," he adds, " are unequaled in depth and precision 
of reason ; and even in the works of our mere com- 
pilers we often meet with speculations beyond the 

383 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

reach of Thucydides or Tacitus." This is the testi- 
mony of one who delighted to tear the vigor and 
flower of his life from the Bar and the Senate, from 
official distinction and the rarest social opportunities, 
that he might survey with ampler scope, while inves- 
tigating with microscopic minuteness, the records of 
the past ; reading a week to fashion a sentence ; find- 
ing reward for laborious journeys in the more pre- 
cise outline of a character, or the more exact picture 
of a scene, in even the more lively turn of a phrase or 
the more lucid completeness of a paragraph. If one 
needs to see, in near example, the fitness of historical 
studies to quicken and maintain high mental enthusi- 
asm, and to discipline and enrich as well as to enlist 
rare and various mental powers, he may certainly find 
the immediate demonstration in the instance of Lord 
Macaulay. 

A college like this, too, and an audience like the 
present, can never fail gratefully to recognize the 
large and beautiful moral impulse delivered upon 
spirits prepared to receive it through their contact in 
history with great, serene and masterful personalities, 
as these present themselves in the crowded passages 
which study explores, daring or suffering in the con- 
flicts of their time. In common life we can, at best, 
but rarely meet such. The saintly and superior souls 
are not mustered in regiments. Multitudinous com- 
panies of elect spirits do not yet surround us on earth. 
It seems, sometimes, as if the enormous secular ad- 
vances of which our times are so full and so proud 
were lowering the height and dimming the luster of 
the moral ideal, as represented in the actual of life. 
Sending messages by lightning, traveling at forty 

384 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

miles to the hour, crossing in a week the ocean which 
the Mayflower perilously breasted, in our sumptuous 
vessels, framed of iron, luxurious in appointment, pro- 
pelled from within, and gay with color as so many 
swimming summer-gardens — these applauded achieve- 
ments do not tend of necessity to the upbuilding of 
nobler courage, to the development of a luminous 
moral wisdom, to the culture of even philosophical re- 
finement, or the nurture of the temper of devout as- 
piration. On the other hand, do we not sometimes 
feel that virtue among us is coming to be too much a 
matter of manners ; that the intense subjective proc- 
esses from which august character is derived are in a 
measure being superseded by the mechanical contriv- 
ances and the physical successes with which our noisy 
years resound ; and that the grand and lovely spirits, 
which are present still, and in which, whensoever we 
touch them, we find strange charm and inspiration, 
are fewer and lonelier than they were ? Surely we 
do mot meet them often, and cannot command their 
presence at our need. 

But in history they abound, and are always at our 
service. Marcus Aurelius, saddest of men, yet im- 
perturbable in a falling empire, and amid the mad 
whirl of an unexplained universe ; Bernard, with the 
flaming intensity of his spirit, commander of kings 
and counselor of pontiffs while the friend and pro- 
tector of the lowliest of the poor, crushing before him 
the insolent noble, and facing the fierce fury of the 
mob on behalf of the Jew; Melanchthon, with his 
beautiful enthusiasm for letters, writing Greek more 
easily than German, modest, peace-loving, yet firm in 
conviction, devoted to the Master in almost passionate 

Y 385 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

love, the very St. John of the stormy Reformation ; 
William of Orange, fronting with majestic endurance 
the apparently irresistible power which swept the 
Netherlands with flame and blade, and recovering for 
freedom the land which his ancestors might literally 
be said to have plucked from the sea — these will come 
to us when we want them ; and with them all, orators, 
statesmen, theologians, artists, leaders of crusades like 
Godfrey of Bouillon, who would not wear a crown 
where his Master had borne the cross, rulers of king- 
doms like St. Louis, poets, philanthropists, heroes, 
martyrs, the women with the men, of whom the 
world of their time was not worthy, by whom the 
world is made worthier to-day. We may wait years, 
or we may journey thousands of miles, to meet in the 
present the special spirit whose office it is, and whose 
charming prerogative, to kindle and ennoble ours. It 
is but to step to the library shelf to come face to face 
with such in the past, if we know where to find them ; 
nay, it is but to let the thought go backward, over 
what has become distinct to our minds, and the silent 
company is around us ; the communion of rejoicing 
and consecrated souls, the illustrious fellowship, in the 
presence of whom our meanness is rebuked, our 
cowardice is shamed, and we become the freer chil- 
dren of God and of the truth. 

Not only the romance of the world is in history, 
but influences so high in source and in force as to be 
even sacred descend through it. Benedictive, sacra- 
mental, is its touch upon responsive souls. We be- 
come comparatively careless of circumstances ; aware 
of kinship, in whatever heroic element may be in us, 
with the choice, transcendent spirits ; regardless of 

386 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

the criticism, or the snarling scoffs, which here may 
surround us, if only conscious of a deeper and more 
complete correspondence with those whose elate and 
unsubduable temper remains among the treasures of 
mankind. I think that to our times, especially, the 
careful and large study of history is among the most 
essential sources of moral inspiration. The cultiva- 
tion of it, in ever larger and richer measure, is one of 
the finest and noblest exercises proposed to young 
minds. Any college which introduces to the society 
of the spirits which have made centuries illustrious, 
takes splendor and majesty from the office. 

The importance of individual life and effort is also 
magnified by it, instead of being diminished or dis- 
guised, as men sometimes fancy ; since one is contin- 
ually reminded afresh of the power which belongs to 
those spiritual forces which all may assist in animating 
and moulding civilizations. Of course an imperfect 
study of history, however rapid and rudimental, 
shows' how often the individual decision and the re- 
straining or inspiring action of great personalities 
have furnished the pivots on which multitudinous con- 
sequences have turned ; how, even after long intervals 
of time, the effects of such have made themselves evi- 
dent, in changed conditions and tendencies of peo- 
ples ; and so it reminds us, with incessant iteration, of 
the vital interlocking of every energetic personal life 
with the series of lives which are unconsciously de- 
pendent upon it, of the reach of its influence upon the 
great complex of historical progress, and of the service 
which each capable or eminent spirit may render to 
the cause of universal culture and peace. But those 
to whom our thoughts are thus turned have been for 

387 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

the most part signal men in their time, remarkable in 
power, distinguished in opportunity, intuitively dis- 
cerning the needs of the age, and with peculiar com- 
petence to meet them. With such we by no means 
may mate ourselves; and, so far, the lesson which 
history teaches may easily seem to be one of dis- 
couragement rather than of impulse, inclining us to 
rely upon occasional great men as the true pioneers 
and champions of progress, and to feel that for our- 
selves we have no place and no responsibility in the 
assistance of large and permanent public advance- 
ment. 

But a deeper inquiry shows us at once that such a 
place and such an obligation belong to each, since 
each may aid, in the measure of his influence, to es- 
tablish or renew those spiritual forces which erect and 
sustain the great and beautiful civilizations. It was, 
we know, the Hellenic spirit, which not only wreaked 
itself on immortal expression in the choicest marbles 
and temples of the world, in the eloquence, the 
tragedy, the comedy, and the song, the high specula- 
tion, and the simple or the stately story, which have 
for mankind a perennial charm, but which also faced 
and fought the Persian, and made the names of Mara- 
thon and Salamis shine resplendent in the crowded 
firmament of the world's recollections ; only in the 
decadence of which did Greece yield to the mastery 
of Macedon. It was the Anglo-Saxon temper which 
the Norman could not extinguish at Hastings or 
trample into the bloody ground, which outlived 
its invaders, conquered its conquerors, and in 
the end forced them to accept, while modify- 
ing in turn, its language, its laws, its popular 

388 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

liberties, and, in great measure, the free spirit 
of its religion. And it was not, fundamentally, by 
William or by Maurice — conspicuous as they are 
on the copious and picturesque pages of Motley — but 
it was by the spirit, indestructibly regnant among 
common people, that the otherwise defenseless Bata- 
vian plains were saved from the furious ravage of 
Spain. The men and women who were ready to suffer 
the loss of all for a King in the heavens — the minis- 
ters, by no means accomplished always in the learning 
of the schools, but who read and expounded the Holy 
"Word in upper rooms, by the light of the flames in 
which their brethren in faith and in service were being 
offered as a sacrifice in the resounding squares below 
— the common sailors who would blow up their ships 
and find graves in the deep, rather than see the vessels 
which they manned the prey of their enemies — the 
promiscuous populations, young and old, nobles and 
burghers, who would tear away dykes and drown the 
land, before they would accept for themselves and 
their children the domination of Philip — these were 
they who saved their country, giving to their leaders 
an indomitable power, snatching success from the 
cruel and haughty hands of what appeared an invin- 
cible invasion ; and to them, supremely, the world 
owes the immense augmentation made by that strug- 
gle of eighty years to the freedom, prosperity and 
culture of Europe. 

So, after Jena, Prussia was regenerated, under the 
lead of Yon Hardenberg and Von Stein, by the sys- 
tem of common school education; and they, more 
radically than Bismarck and Yon Moltke, have con- 
tributed to make that recent kingdom the center of 

389 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

the German Empire, the arbitrating power in the in- 
ternational politics of Europe. It was true, as the mili- 
tary attache wrote to his master, the lesser Napoleon, 
that the schoolmaster, not the needle-gun, triumphed 
at Sadowa. So Scotland, also, with a comparatively- 
sparse population, on a sterile soil, and under unpropi- 
tious skies, has become the seemingly inexhaustible 
source of great teachings in all departments, indus- 
trial, philosophical, theological, poetic. Out of the 
instructed and invigorated life of the Scottish people 
have come not only the looms of Paisley, and the vast 
industries on the Clyde, but Scott and Jeffrey, Erskine 
and Hume, Chalmers, Guthrie and Hugh Miller, Burns 
and Carlyle. 

Even in the physical world invisible and impalpable 
forces are those which govern : the light, which 
strikes without indenting the infant's eye, which no 
balances can weigh, and whose secret remains undis- 
covered by man; the lightning, which subtly paces 
the wires, and sheds illumination on streets and squares, 
but which shows its effect, never itself, in the blazing 
edges of cloven clouds ; the cohesive attractions which 
build and bind all organized bodies, but which the 
microscope cannot discern; the life, which no man 
can analyze or can see except in operation; the in- 
clusive and vast energy of gravitation, which holds at 
once each pebble on the beach, each flying foam-fleck 
driven by winds, while it reaches the farthest nebulas 
in its grasp, the very muscle of omnipotence com- 
pacting the universe in its integrity. Tremendous, 
immeasurable, as this power is, before its operation 
no slightest rustle is stirred amid the quiet air. So 
everywhere, structures decay and forms disappear, the 

390 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

things unseen are the things eternal. It is the same 
law which manifests itself in national development. 
Moral forces are always behind the palpable phenom- 
ena. The historical progress that moves our admira- 
tion has been initiated, and been afterward assured 
and guided, by spiritual energies. We have never 
reached the secrets of history till we apprehend these. 
And every man and every woman has his or her work 
in the world plainly set forth under the light of this 
great lesson. It is for each, in the measure of the 
power and opportunity of each, to cherish and diffuse 
the temper out of which in their time the great and 
benign changes shall come. Neither the eloquent and 
stimulating speech which went before our civil war, 
nor the military judgment, fortitude, valor, which pre- 
sided on its historical fields, would have carried to 
success the vast revolution which we have seen, and 
for which the country to-day rejoices from the Lakes 
to the Gulf, except for the patient love of freedom and 
hatred of slavery which had been nurtured in quiet 
homes, by peaceful firesides, in the preceding years. 
In dispersed villages the real battle was fought, not at 
Gettysburg or at Shiloh. The splendid burst of our 
century-plant into a bloom as rich and as brilliant as 
the continent ever can show, went back to hidden and 
homely roots. And until that great experience is for- 
gotten, the lesson which all the study of history im- 
peratively teaches cannot lose its emphasis for us: 
that every one in a civilized and advancing community 
has the opportunity. to do something for the future as 
well as for the present, and that on each is set the 
crown of this noble right, and this imperious obliga- 
tion. 

391 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

I have no function as preacher here, but I may be 
permitted to add that history is a department of study 
leaving, in my judgment, as distinct and salutary 
religious impressions as does any form of secular 
knowledge opened to man. Ours is a historical 
religion; coming to us through historical books, 
exhibiting its energy through two thousand years, in 
the recorded advancement of mankind ; which may be 
studied almost as distinctly in the moral and social 
progress of peoples under its inspiration as in the 
writings, of narrative and epistle, which represent 
the source and the government of that progress. 
Certainly a force incalculable by man was exerted by 
this religion in the conversion of the Roman Empire 
from the fierce passions and vices of Paganism to even 
the partial and qualified acceptance of the pure and 
austere Christian rule. Make all the allowance which 
the skeptic can ask for the political and military 
ambitions which consented to or conspired with the 
spiritual changes introduced by Christianity, and it 
still remains an astonishing fact, wholly inexplicable 
by human analysis, that a recent, unattractive and 
foreign religion, hated and fought with the utmost 
fury by those whose only moral alliance was through 
their common antagonism to it, should in less than 
three centuries have changed the gardens of Nero into 
resorts for Christian worship ; should have scattered 
its assemblies and their institutions over the whole 
civilized world, and have blazoned the cross on the 
standards of the Empire. It must have had a Divine 
energy with it and in it to accomplish an effect so 
strange and stupendous. On any other hypothesis 
the chances were millions on millions to one, as even 

392 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

thoughtful unbelievers admit, against its success — 
against, indeed, its continued existence. The astonish- 
ing changes wrought by it are to this day almost 
incredible to those who know what Rome had been 
under Tiberius, and what it had come to be in the 
time of Theodosius. A power invisible but also 
invincible, behind the movement, is as evident as are 
the subterranean fires in the shining outbreak of 
volcanoes, or as are the vast subterranean forces be- 
neath the shattering tremble of earthquakes. 

Almost equally afterward, in the conquest of 
barbarian tribes, in the fusion, the restraint and the 
moral education of the savage, nomadic and relentless 
populations from which have gradually come into 
being the Christian states of modern Europe — in the 
immense constructive energies which silently wrought, 
but wrought with amazing breadth and effect, amid 
the medieval chaos — in the astonishing reformation 
of religion, opening the Bible to the study of mankind, 
and using pulpit and printing press for its conquering 
instruments against majestic establishments of hier- 
archical power — in the work already in part accom- 
plished upon this continent, and which is swiftly 
going on in Europe and the East, in India, Africa, the 
islands of the Pacific — the same celestial, unsubduable 
energy everywhere confronts us, inhering organically 
in our religion, while also inseparably associated with 
it in cosmical operation. No miracle of the Master's 
time, however fully accredited, shows more distinctly 
the might of God under the human muscle which it 
clothed, than do these vast developments in history 
his intervening thought and will. One sees some- 
times in a studio or a gallery a veiled statue, every 

393 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

characteristic line of form and face visible beneath 
what seems a thin film of lace-work, which itself, 
however, is wrought in the marble. So the very 
earth on which we stand is coming to show the face 
of the Christ, wrought into it from above, and 
revealed through the reticulated hardness of its 
slowly yielding civilization. And the mind of Him 
from whom sprang the genius of the sculptor is 
supremely declared in this effect. 

There is something more, therefore, in the history 
of Christendom than philosophy teaching by example. 
It infolds and expresses the Christian Keligion, work- 
ing itself into partial, difficult, but progressive ex- 
hibition, through intractable materials, against stub- 
born opposition, with a power unyielding and un- 
decaying because it is of God. To one who listens 
with reverent heart, the voice of the Master still 
sounds amid the uproar of passionate tempests, and 
still commands the final calm. The entire history is, 
in fact, a kind of secondary rubricated Scripture, 
immense in extent, covering the continents, written in 
colossal Roman and Gothic characters, the initial let- 
ters stamped sometimes in gold and sometimes in 
blood, but the vast, confused and tangled text holding 
in it still the song of angels, the benedictions on the 
Mount, the story of Bethlehem, Capernaum and the 
cross, the illustrious Ascension, and the terrible tri- 
umph of the Apocalypse. 

A divine purpose in all history becomes gradually 
apparent to him who with discerning thought surveys 
its annals. The Bible proceeds upon the assumption 
of such a plan, though perhaps no one of its separated 
writers had a full conception of that which he was in 

394 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

part portraying. Back beyond the beginnings of his- 
tory, onward to the secure consummation, lovely and 
immortal, which prophecies prefigure, extends this 
plan. Parts of it are yet inscrutable to us, as parts of 
the heavens are still unsounded by any instruments. 
But the conviction becomes constantly clearer, among 
those to whom the records of the past unfold in a 
measure not contents only but glowing portents, that 
a divine mind has presided over all ; that every 
remotest people or tribe has had its part to do or to 
bear in the general progress ; and that at last, when 
all is interpreted, the unity of the race, with the in- 
cessant interaction of its parts under the control and 
in the concord of a divine scheme, will come dis- 
tinctly into view. Mysterious movements, as of the 
peoples who from woods and untamed wastes inun- 
dated Europe, and before whose irresistible momentum 
bastions and ramparts, the armies and ensigns of the 
mistress of the world went hopelessly down, will be 
seen to have had their impulse and direction as well 
as their end. Great passive empires, as of China, will 
be found to have served some primordial purpose ; and 
the Mind which sees the end from the beginning will 
be evidenced in the ultimate human development as 
truly as it is in the swing of suns or in the constitution 
of unmeasured constellations. 

The British Empire a week ago was ringing and 
flaming with the august and brilliant ceremonies which 
marked the completion of fifty years in the reign of 
one whose name is with us, almost as generally as in 
her own realms, a household word. American hearts 
joined those of their kinsmen across the sea, around 
the world, in giving God thanks for the purity and 

395 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

the piety with which the young maiden of fifty years 
since has borne herself amid gladness and grief, over- 
shadowing change and vast prosperity, and for the 
progress of industry and of liberty, of commerce, edu- 
cation and Christian faith by which her times have 
been distinguished. But something more than the 
wisdom of statesmen, or the valor of captains, or any 
silent or resonant work of man, has been involved in 
all this. An unseen power has been guiding events to 
the fulfilment of plans as wide as the world, and far 
more ancient than Dover cliffs, with the narrow seas 
which gleam around them. The ultimate kingdom of 
righteousness and of peace is nearer for these remark- 
able years. It was well to render grateful praise, in 
church and chapel, in cathedral and abbey, in quiet 
homes and great universities, to Him who has given 
such luster to the fame and such success to the reign of 
the wise and womanly and queenly Yictoria. 

But as with her reign, so with all that advancing 
history of mankind in connection with which this 
brilliant half-century, of feminine supremacy and im- 
perial expansion, has to be set to reveal its significance. 
It everywhere discloses the silent touch and the sweep- 
ing command of Divine forecasts. It reverberates 
with echoes to superlative designs. I know of no other 
department of study, outside of the Scriptures, more 
essentially or profoundly religious. A Christian col- 
lege may well hold it in honoring esteem, and give it 
in permanence an eminent place among the studies 
which it proposes. 

In our recent country, in our times of rapid and 
tumultuous change, it seems to me that we specially 
need this, as the thoughtful among us are specially in- 

396 * 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

clined to it, since it is vital to the dignity and self -poise 
of our national life that we feel ourselves constantly 
interknit with the life of the world, from which the 
ocean does not divide us ; that we recognize our mag- 
nificent inheritance in the opulent results of the effort 
and the struggle of other generations. It is a distinct 
and encouraging indication of the best qualities of the 
American spirit, as well as of the vigor and vivacity of 
the American mind and the variety of its attainments, 
that such studies are eagerly prosecuted among us, and 
that those who have given to them, with splendid en- 
thusiasm, laborious lives — like Prescott, Motley, our 
honored Bancroft — have been among the most inspiring 
of our teachers, have gained and will keep their prin- 
cipal places in that Kepublic of letters from which the 
Republic of political fame must always take grace and 
renown. 

But I have taken this study of history, Ladies and 
Gentlemen, not so much to particularize the various 
and profuse benefits of it — for which, of course, volumes 
would be needed, instead of paragraphs — as to indicate 
by it with a sharper distinctness the broadened range 
and brightened outlook which belong to the college 
course of to-day, as compared with that to which we 
were accustomed a half-century ago. Then, as I said, 
nothing of history was here taught, except as perhaps 
obscurely suggested by Latin or Greek vocables and 
constructions. Now it has this prominent place 
among the elective studies of two years ; and the 
change is significant of much. The same tendency 
appears on other sides, especially, for instance, in the 
courses of study now proposed in the modern lan- 
guages. These, too, are both for training and for 

397 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

culture. They come with the study on which I have 
dwelt, in an association at once natural and close. 
The languages of Goethe and Schiller, of Dante, of 
Cervantes — the intelligent mastery of these is not for 
ornament only or chiefly, nor even for directer access 
to the manifold knowledges distributed in them, but 
that one may come to more intimate contact with the 
life expressed in European literature in its original 
forms, and that the sense of being able to converse 
with the masters of thought in their own tongues may 
add vigor to faculty, a general wealth and luster to 
life. So with all the connected changes in what was 
of old the narrow range of the studies here offered. 
The aim has clearly been, as I have said, to give to 
those going forth from the college, to whatever depart- 
ments of experience and of labor, an ampler knowledge, 
a finer and a nobler power, new instruments for hap- 
piness and for useful activity. The training of faculty, 
in studious minds, is still the governing primary aim, 
with the impression of the Christian truth and law 
and temper. But the wider culture is now recognized 
as auxiliary to this, while in itself of a beautiful value ; 
and the college is unquestionably to widen its range to 
further bounds as years go on, and thus to make itself 
helpful and dear to more numerous minds, in more 
various departments of skilful work, as generations 
follow in their silent succession. So will it continue, 
and so will it become yet more and more, a beautiful 
power in the civilization to which it contributes. It is 
the expectation of this, and not merely the memory of 
the past, which animates our hearts as we gather here 
to-day. Not with every year, perhaps, shall this grow- 
ing oak add another concentric ring of equipment or 

398 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

of discipline to its previous substance, but when an- 
other half -century shall have passed how many shall 
have been these silent augmentations ! How broad 
the shadow, and how solid the strength, of that which 
here in our own time was anxiously planted, in poverty, 
but with prayer ! 

Gathered as we are by this special anniversary, it is 
a question which naturally meets us, and toward which 
this rapid and imperfect discussion has constantly 
tended, "What is the native and normal relation of a 
fraternity like ours to this great change in the cus- 
tomary courses of college instruction, and to the wider 
effects which it contemplates ? And this is a question 
the answer to which is not far to seek. 

By gathering to itself, as has been the effort of this 
fraternity, those of choice intellectual parts, and of 
earnest and catholic literary tastes, as well as of 
wholesome moral instincts and agreeable social man- 
ners, it systematically reinforces among its members 
the spirit of generous scholarly enterprise. Knitting 
students together in personal affiliation for intellectual 
purposes, it makes their minds interactive on each 
other, not in public competitions, but in the private 
communications of defined and limited circles, while 
any distinguished success of either becomes a part of 
the pride of the chapter. Students so related neces- 
sarily and constantly educate each other, maintaining 
among them the common aspiration for widened 
knowledge, for more various accomplishments, a more 
carefully trained intellectual force. The familiar 
criticism which they continually meet is cheering and 
quickening, not discouraging. In all kindness and 
confidence they search each other, till each is likely to 

399 



ORATIONS AND 'ADDRESSES 

learn the lesson of the legend inscribed over the statue 
of Tycho Brahe in the Thein church at Prague (Pro- 
fessor Tyler is responsible for the old-fashioned pro- 
nunciation) : " Esse potius quam haberV The com- 
mon desire to make the finest use of their powers, if 
not in one particular department then in another, is 
as natural to students so associated as friendship is to 
sympathetic households. One might almost say that 
it comes as certainly as any effect of physical law, in 
the perfumed breath which steals forth from gardens, 
or in the lush foliage of June. It is native, not im- 
ported ; and it has a power of its own, not only to 
sustain the nobly ambitious, but even to curb the un- 
ruly and to animate the sluggish. 

An influence of this kind is always important, not 
easy to secure, of great value when gained, in any col- 
lege ; and some plan of the sort with which we are 
familiar seems almost indispensable to it, since the 
mind of the student takes incentive and guidance from 
the minds of others ot his own standing, or but 
slightly advanced, quite as readily at least, and quite 
as richly, as from any minds of older teachers, which 
are to him relatively remote. It is an influence pecul- 
iarly important, it seems to me, in our time, when the 
taste for athletic competition and achievement has be- 
come so wide and so engrossing. The change in this 
respect from the college of our earlier day, with its 
swings and rough bars in the open air, its creaking 
spring-board and wheezing football, is as striking as 
any that has occurred. It came almost as suddenly 
as a cyclone, though it came to stay. A bright young 
man in one of our older Eastern colleges was rusti- 
cated in his junior year for visiting a bowling-alley 

400 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

too often. Being a man of good habits, of fair 
scholarship, and of excellent character, he came back 
to his class, was graduated with honor, and two years 
after was appointed tutor, one of the duties of his 
tutorship being to see that the men in his division 
went regularly to the work of the gymnasium, in 
which the bowling-alley was a principal feature. The 
change is wise, and greatly beneficial. It is plainly a 
return, even if in the somewhat boisterous American 
fashion, toward the Greek idea of simultaneous and 
harmonious training of body and of mind as neces- 
sary to a complete education. But there has been 
some danger, perhaps, that the element coming in with 
this later vehemence might disturb and obscure that 
to which it has been added, as the rushing Arve mud- 
dies the clear blue of the Rhone into which it is ab- 
sorbed. The temper of intellectual aspiration, 
quickened and sustained by frequent and intimate in- 
tellectual fellowships, must keep its preeminence, or 
the college would soon become a mere shouting and 
stormy athletic club. A fraternity like ours, working 
normally, works always in the needed direction. It 
animates the taste for variety in study, and is thus in 
constitutional sympathy with the entire intellectual 
movement within the colleges in recent years. It puts 
the stimulated minds of its members face to face, for 
mutual discipline, reciprocal incentive ; and it is always 
study which it helps, a manifold culture, rather than 
any development of muscle. Its running matches are in 
the fields of the Muses. Its applauded achievements 
are in the domain of letters and the arts. The leap and 
wrestle which it .encourages, are between minds moving 
from thought to thought, and from author to author. 

z 401 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

It has even a distinctly moral influence, as evident 
as the mental, and yet more beneficent. Instances arc- 
within my knowledge in which certain bright and 
eager young men, peculiarly susceptible to college 
temptations, while peculiarly fit for college successes, 
have been restrained from bad associations, have been 
excited to better ambitions, have been enveloped, to 
their permanent advantage, in a governing spirit 
within the chapter which wrought for a gentler and 
nobler manhood. I cannot but think that a wise 
faculty will always shelter, favor and cherish any as- 
sociation which works in this temper for ends so im- 
portant. 

A beneficial influence belongs also, inherently, to 
such an organized fraternity, arising from the fact 
that whatever has been done by its older members, 
after graduation, in the way of distinguished literary 
work, of eloquent speech, of effective assistance to 
generous movements, is kept more distinctly before 
the minds of those tarrying in the chapters from 
whose active exercises the others have withdrawn. A 
certain sense of special fellowship unites therein the 
younger with the older, which in its way, and in the 
measure of its reach, is an educating power. The 
students of a college are always glad, and properly 
proud, when one of its graduates attains high distinc- 
tion in the literary, the professional, or the political 
field. But the members of a chapter have a clearer 
and a closer sense of just gratification when one whose 
name is borne on their rolls achieves a useful and 
high distinction. Old stories are recalled of his earlier 
efforts ; his subsequent methods, in study and in the 
culture of style, are more carefully scanned ; a fresh 

402 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

ambition is started in those who have their own place 
to attain in the world ; and I cannot doubt that many 
responsive and onlooking minds, in this chapter and 
in others, have been inspired to greater ardor in ap- 
propriate studies, and greater persistency in intellec- 
tual exercise, to acquire for themselves a noble and an 
exquisite English style, to master the power of high 
and rich and discriminated thought, to prepare them- 
selves for large offices in the world — because belong- 
ing to chapters bearing in eminence on their rolls 
names like those of Frederic Huntington, Algernon 
Sullivan, Truman Backus, of the Choate who adds 
new honor to the name, of the Curtis whose touch of 
velvet smoothness, in daintiest sentences, hides behind 
it a sensitive conscience, with purposes strong as 
sinews of steel. Each member feels a fresh responsi- 
bility resting upon him to keep himself worthy of 
companionship like theirs; to prepare himself to 
stand, when the time has come, in the ranks upon 
which abides a luster from names so honored. Even 
names which death has crowned with stars — like that 
of the accomplished scholar, the eloquent teacher, the 
wide-minded theologian, whose presence we had gladly 
expected to-da}'-, and sadly miss — have a continuing 
power to bless. They do not fade from eye or 
thought, but beckon us up to higher levels, while we a 
little longer linger. 

A peculiar sense of union with others closely and 
happily associated with one in such a fraternity goes 
forward with him, too, into subsequent life, wherever 
and in whatsoever vocation his lot may be cast ; and 
this brings its own beauty and blessing. It is inevita- 
ble, as I have said, that the outcome of the college 

403 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

system, as it now is presented, should be shown on 
more diversified fields of subsequent labor than were 
contemplated a half -century ago. Not all men trained 
in such institutions as this is rapidly coming to be are 
to be ministers, lawyers, or physicians. Some will be 
architects, painters, sculptors; some will be editors, 
authors, teachers ; some will be scientists, inventors, 
explorers, or civil engineers ; and some will be cul- 
tured merchants, perhaps, manufacturers, bankers, rail- 
way officers, or men of property and leisure. Their 
paths will diverge more and more, as life goes on, and 
their separated employments will tend to keep them 
apart from each other. Without some influence in 
the opposite direction, the effect may be to prevent 
the invigorating contact of their minds with each 
other, by absorbing each, with a narrowing rigor, in 
his special pursuit. It is well and salutary, under cir- 
cumstances like these, that there be strong and vital 
sympathies uniting them in after life, arising from 
common glad recollections of sympathetic association 
in the earlier days ; that they go back together to the 
pleasant reunions, intellectual and social, of the chap- 
ter-house and its meetings ; that the earlier collisions 
and happy affiliations of mind with mind come freshly 
to their remembering thought. So will be likely to 
be kept alive in them a certain healthful and beautiful 
correspondence of spirit and aim, in the broader life 
into which they have entered. The college itself will 
have for their memories a livelier charm. The earlier 
aspiration will more surely survive in their souls. 
Unconsciously, even, they will heed and fulfil the 
noble advice which the Marquis de Posa, according to 
Schiller, sent by the Queen to his pupil, Don Carlos : 

404 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

" To revere in manhood the dreams of his youth, and 
not to be led astray when by the wisdom of the dust 
he hears enthusiasm blasphemed." In our hurried 
American society, full as it is of secular ambitions, of 
rapidity, noise, and the clamor for success in whatever 
department, this seems to me peculiarly needful ; and 
certainly the impulse of a fraternity like this, and like 
others established with similarly discreet plans and 
aims, must supply here a force of essential value, and 
of permanent efficiency. 

It tends as well, I am equally sure, in the measure 
of its influence, to remove the prejudices which used 
to exist between the students of different colleges, and 
even to bring the institutions themselves into happier 
relations, as members of the several chapters of the 
fraternity, in the various colleges, meet in a coopera- 
tive sympathy, and honor and rejoice in each other's 
success. The old temper was one, we must admit, 
rather of distrust, or of positive dislike, between the 
colleges of the seaboard and these among the hills ; 
between the latter, among themselves. In my time 
here, the typical Harvard student was to us one who 
did not greatly exercise his brain, but who wore 
glasses, carried a cane, was curled and perfumed, 
and studiously parted his hair in the middle. His 
conception of us was, doubtless, a caricature equally 
grotesque, but in a widely different direction. From 
those of not a few other colleges we expected vigor, 
pluck, intellectual push, but with palpable deficiencies 
in refinement and grace. Many causes have modified 
this spirit of mutual disrespect, largely ameliorating 
if they have not abolished it. One of the causes 
operating in this way, with an excellent effect, has 

405 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

been the frequent communications between the chap- 
ters of general fraternities extending into many col- 
leges. The more distinguished students in each have 
become known to the others. The governing sense of 
common aims, and a common work, has been con- 
stantly reinforced in each toward the rest. A certain 
solidarity, of harmonious aspiration and of reciprocal 
interest, comes by degrees to be established among 
them. The time is certainly hastened in its approach 
when all the colleges scattered over the land will rec- 
ognize themselves as only local constituent members 
of the real and great American University; which 
will have no single cathedral city, but the campus of 
the continent, for its seat, and which will be richer 
than in any renown derived from the past through 
the fame which it wins by training men for great 
utilities, noble offices. By training men, I have said ; 
but the training of women, through similar methods, 
with an equal effect, is a part of the modern widened 
movement among American colleges, as important as 
the other which I have sketched, in close harmony 
with it, and assuming rapidly equal proportions. 
]STewnham and Girton have lately surprised the Eng- 
lish universities by the accurate and large learning 
imparted in them. Smith College and Amherst will 
have as well their friendly rivalries and eager com- 
petitions, and the vexed problem of coeducation may 
be held, I think, by the most exacting and fastidious 
critic, to have found in them its proper solution, un- 
less Amherst and Northampton are farther from each 
other than they used to be when I was young. The 
final University which is thus magnificently arising 
among us will embrace in itself all such equipped and 

406 



MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING 

advancing schools, of training and culture, in any 
state, for either sex. Its vastness and opulence will 
have had no parallel among the comparatively re- 
stricted institutions across the sea, to which kings and 
prelates have made contribution. Its spires will shine 
from the sounding Atlantic onward to the ocean of 
Peace. Multitudinous associations, clinging: more te- 
naciously than tentacles of ivy, will robe its far ex- 
tending walls, as the pavements of its corridors are 
worn by the feet of successive generations. Its chim- 
ing bells, with musical triumph, will ring in the era of 
assured liberty, of popular intelligence with a refined 
and ripened culture, of thriving enterprise, and of 
Christian faith. 

So, Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, and broth- 
ers of the fraternity, I join with you in gladness at the 
fact that the fifty years since this chapter was organ- 
ized have seen it growing in strength and fame, keep- 
ing at least in equal advance with the college in which 
it is embosomed ; and I join with you equally in the 
hope that when another half-century shall have passed 
it may have only an ampler power, a richer promise, a 
nobler fame. The traveler in Switzerland not unfre- 
quently sees in the eastern sky what he takes to be a 
patch of cloud, fair but fleeting, white beneath the 
morning light, silently transfigured, as if charged from 
within by golden, chrysolite, opaline lusters, when the 
sun has passed the meridian. Its permanence gives it 
interpretation. It is not a cloud, but a mountain peak, 
solid as the earth from which it arises, though delicate 
in outline, and burning in the air like a translucent 
gem. This chapter which we love seemed to some, no 
doubt, in the days when the morning light lay on our 

407 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

path, a passing whirl of mist-laden air, hovering for a 
season in the sky of the college. It has kept its place, 
never expanding to large proportions, but growing 
more eminent and more variously lucent before our 
thought as the sun for us has descended in the west. 
I trust that it will be as permanent as the college, and 
will be constantly clothed upon with a more attractive 
and various charm, as the sun which is to mark the 
iollowing centuries in the life of the college seeks its, 
as yet, unseen horizon. 



408 



IX 
THE PURITAN SPIRIT 



An Oration delivered before the Congregational Club in Tremont 
Temple, Boston, December 18, 1889. 



IX 

THE PURITAN SPIRIT 



Me. Peesident, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

When I rashly yielded to the request of your Com- 
mittee, and promised to deliver an address before the 
Congregational Club on this occasion, I expected it to 
be that comparatively simple and informal thing which 
one styles familiarly an Address ; delivered before a 
company of a few hundred persons, many of them, 
doubtless, my personal friends. I did not anticipate 
that in the air of Boston, a sup of which the early im- 
migrants declared equal to a draught of English ale, 
and in the exuberant fancy of the Committee, what I 
had proposed might 

suffer a sea-change 

Into something rich and strange, 

and be set forth to the public as an Oration, gather- 
ing this vast assembly by which I am partly animated 
but chiefly appalled. However, you will not forget, I 
am sure, my modest promise ; and if I cannot conduct 
you, as I cannot, through any House Beautiful, such 
as Boston Orations are known and are expected to be, 
you will let me introduce you to an unobtrusive and 
commonplace structure of thought, such as may rea- 
sonably bear upon its low and unadorned lintel the 
name " Address." 

411 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

It is often said by those who desire the highest wel- 
fare of the nation, and who feel that to such welfare 
right moral and spiritual forces are first of all need- 
ful, that what this country chiefly needs, to maintain 
and exalt its place in the world, is a larger measure of 
the Puritan spirit, in energetic development and in 
wide distribution. 

Fundamentally, the vast effort, pursued now for. a 
hundred years, to plant churches at the West, with 
schools, colleges, seminaries of whatever class, to in- 
spire and mould instruction there, has had in this feel- 
ing its impulse and motive ; and its value has been es- 
timated, by those who have made it, by its success in 
this direction. The same thing is substantially true 
of the similar efforts now being made, with unsur- 
passed patience and energy, at the South and in the 
New West. The effort is to practically New-Eng- 
landize the continent ; and however it has changed in 
our time, in its special forms of manifestation, the Pu- 
ritan spirit is that which has given to New England 
its characteristic place and power in the vastly en- 
larged national organism. The many institutions, of 
rising rank and growing power, all over the vast area 
of the country, show the energy of this impulse, with 
its partial and perhaps its prophetic success. 

On the other hand, however, hardly any proposal 
meets fiercer opposition in many quarters than does 
this very one. " It is precisely this Puritan spirit," 
multitudes say, " which we do not want. It would be 
well if it could be practically extirpated in New Eng- 
land itself. To carry it through the country would be 
to fetter and pervert the whole development of the 
nation, and to embarrass or thwart its career. It may 

412 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

easily bring about a popular revolution. "We need to 
move, distinctly and purposely, in the opposite direc- 
tion ; to break away from restraints, to emerge finally 
from the earlier glooms, and to secure on all sides am- 
pler tolerance, larger freedom of opinion and custom. 
The contrary effort will be vain and may be destruc- 
tive, forcing a fierce, if not a fatal, explosion." 

Probably this feeling was never wider or more en- 
ergetic than it is at this hour. The incessant inrush 
of immigration from abroad adds constantly to its vol- 
ume. The expansion of population over wider spaces 
increases its extensiveness, if not its intensity. As 
secular interests become more prominent, and the 
towers of exchanges, newspaper offices, insurance and 
telegraph buildings, surpass and dwarf the spires of 
churches, it naturally increases ; and as men depart 
further from the inherited faith of their fathers, either 
in the direction of Yaticanism on the one hand, or of 
agnosticism on the other, this feeling becomes more 
keen and controlling. In regard to no one subject, 
therefore, affecting our national development and 
career, is the contest fiercer than in regard to this ; 
and few signs appear that it is to subside, for years to 
come, in any general harmony of judgment. 

It may be worth while, then, to consider particularly 
what it is which really constitutes and effectively dif- 
ferentiates the Puritan spirit ; and to look at this as 
it has widely appeared in the world, not merely or 
mainly in this province of New England. New Eng- 
land is an important district, though it may not ap- 
pear as vast as it once did, when one has lived for 
forty-odd years outside its bounds. But it is certainly 
by no means considerable, as territorially related to 

413 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

the surface of the earth, or even of the continent. 
Two hundred and seventy years are a considerable 
period of time, but they dwindle to insignificance be- 
fore the recorded centuries of history. 

Perhaps enough has been said of the Puritan spirit 
as it has appeared in these immediate delightful sur- 
roundings. It has been sketched in poetry, and in 
picturesque prose, in philosophical discussion, and with 
elaborate eloquence, with witty jest and in fascina- 
ting fiction; sometimes, perhaps, with extravagant 
eulogy, and sometimes, we know, with extraordinary 
force of hatred and derision. There are those around 
me, on this platform, who have contributed memo- 
rably to this discussion, with ample learning, in admi- 
rable utterance, with a just enthusiasm for those whose 
blood they have inherited, and whose names they 
have nobly adorned. It is not necessary, and it is not 
at all my present purpose, to add to this special pro- 
fuse discussion. Let us look, rather, at the Puritan 
spirit as it has asserted itself at large, on an ampler 
area, in the broader ranges of general history. We 
may there see it more clearly, perhaps ; as one sees a 
mountain, in its majestic and harmonious outlines, 
most distinctly from a distance, not from its base, or 
from the sides or shoulders of it; — the Oberland 
group, from the terrace at Berne ; the Graian or the 
Pennine Alps, from the streets of Turin or from the 
cathedral roof at Milan. 

Our first question must naturally be : What are the 
elements vitally involved in the distinctive Puritan 
spirit, as that has hitherto and in general experience 
appeared in the world ? Let us disengage these, as 
far as we may, from individual traits, which are as 

414 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

various as the millionfold crinkles along a coast, and 
survey them impersonally, before we regard them in 
particular examples. 

The spirit, as such, is not to be identified, of course, 
with any specific form either of doctrine or of wor- 
ship, since it has appeared in connection with many, 
and has continued positive and permanent, while they 
have been widely and variously changed. The ele- 
ments involved in it are essentially moral, and ear- 
nestly practical, not theoretical ; and they are not 
difficult to ascertain and exhibit. 

The first is, I think we all shall agree, an intense 
conviction of that which is apprehended as truth, with 
a consequent desire to maintain and extend it, and to 
bring all others, if possible, to affirm it. 

It by no means follows, you observe, that what is 
thus apprehended is truth, or is truth in harmonious 
and complete exhibition. JSTo man, or body of men, 
according to our conception of things, is infallible on 
all subjects, or even on any, history being witness ; 
and very different forms of thought have at different 
times drawn to themselves the intense conviction of 
human minds. It is the vigor, the moral energy of 
the conviction, which belongs to and which character- 
izes the Puritan spirit. 

Usually, this concerns supremely moral or religious 
propositions, rather than those which are political or 
philosophical ; though the latter may no doubt take 
occasional supremacy, as being involved in the others, 
or closely associated with them. Usually, too, it is 
founded, you will notice, on personal inquiry, indi- 
vidual reflection, not on traditional impressions or ex- 
ternal instruction ; while, very largely, it takes its ag- 

415 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

gressive and resolute force from personal experience, 
which seems, of course, to give an assurance that 
nothing else can. So the conviction is sharp-set and 
energetic, however narrow it may seem to those who 
do not share it. It may be wanting, as not unfre- 
quently it has been, in breadth of view, and in clear- 
ness of perspective ; but it is never wavering or weak. 
It is naturally uncompromising toward what contra- 
dicts it ; and it perhaps too easily makes one impa- 
tient of divergence in opinion, liable to suspect moral 
error in those not mentally agreeing with it. It is 
not particularly catholic in temper, and not usually 
conciliatory in forms of expression ; and to those who 
do not have definite, urgent and sovereign opinions, 
it may easily seem imperious and harsh, repellently 
arrogant. 

But it becomes, by reason of its strength, a very 
positive power in the world of thought. It leads one 
to risk much on his convictions, to be utterly bold on 
their behalf, and to be ready to stand or fall with 
them before God and the universe : and in this is al- 
ways dignity and power. • It is in exact antithesis — 
this distinctive Puritan spirit — to that indifferent, 
pyrrhonic temper, always popular in the world, and 
never more so than in our time, which thinks one 
opinion about as good as another — this more probable, 
perhaps, that more doubtful, but no one of all abso- 
lutely and certainly true. 

An accomplished friend of mine, somewhat critical 
perhaps of accepted opinions, once heard a sermon 
from an eminent divine of New England, on the char- 
acter of Judas, in which the sordid and treacherous 
meanness of the apostate apostle, ripening into stu- 

416 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

pendous crime, was traced with a touch as delicate 
and vivid as the severity was unsparing. As he 
passed from the church, a friend said to him, " What 
a terrific discourse that was ! so true to the record, so 
true to life, and so startlingly true to the secrets of 
sin ! " " Yes," was his reply, " it was certainly a tre- 
mendous summing up against Judas ; but some things, 
I think, might fairly be said upon the other side." 
That is always the temper which is restless in conclu- 
sions, which doubts whatever it does not see, and 
which can accept no result of thought as beyond the 
reach of further revision. You may like it, perhaps. 
For the evening, at least, I shall open no quarrel with 
it. I only point out the fact that it is as alien from 
the Puritan temper as is that of the careless observer 
of society from that of the heroic reformer ; as was 
that of Erasmus from that of John Huss ; as that of 
the " free lance," in the Middle Ages, bold and skil- 
ful, but ready to follow any banner which paid him 
best, from that of the perhaps mistaken but always 
chivalric soldier or knight, who would fight to the 
death for Church and crown. 

On its intellectual side, this fairly exhibits the Puri- 
tan spirit. 

But also, with this intellectual temper, is associated 
characteristically, in this spirit, an intense sense of the 
authority of righteousness, as constituting the impera- 
tive law for mankind, only in obedience to which is it 
possible to realize true human nobleness and beauty. 

Here again, you observe, it by no means follows 
that that which is conceived to be righteous is so in 
fact, or is so fully. Men's moral judgment of particu- 
lars, in action or in habit, may be widely and diversely 

AA 417 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

mistaken. It is apt to be variously shaped and shaded 
through the impressions of early instruction, of exter- 
nal influences, of transmitted prepossessions, not un- 
frequently through the force of an unsuspected self- 
interest turning the delicate indicating needle from the 
true north ; so that courses of action seeming right to 
some shall be to others ethically offensive, and even 
the crimes of one state of society shall appear virtues 
to another. Thus, in our time, slavery has been as- 
sailed and defended, with equal vehemence and with 
equal tenacity, by those in whom was the Puritan 
spirit ; as in other days the divine right of kings, and 
the duty of regicide, have alike found supporters 
among them. JSTo special code of formal regulations 
belongs, distinctively, to the Puritan spirit. 

But that which is peculiar to it is the conviction of 
a law of righteousness, the omnipresent, superlative 
and unyielding law in the universe of mind, before 
which self-interest must be silent, against which the 
power of human passion vainly breaks, in conformity 
with which human laws have justification and vindica- 
tion, and find their only secure support. Theoretic- 
ally, of course, Cicero had recognized this in what 
Lactantius called the "almost divine words" of the 
Republic ; as did Seneca afterward ; as Plato had 
done before ; and as Sophocles had put into the lips of 
the doomed Antigone the recognition of the " un- 
written and immovable laws of the gods," eternally 
vital, which no mortal may justly transgress. But 
the peculiarity of the Puritan spirit is that it affirms 
this with tremendous emphasis, undertakes to test 
everything by it, and is determined to force it into 
practice, whatever happens. The Puritan is constitu- 

418 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

tionally, always, the incarnate conscience of his time ; 
and, as one of our present illustrious guests said, in 
substance, fifty years ago this week, in an Address 
which was an Oration, in the city of IsTew York, " It 
was Conscience in the Pilgrims which brought them to 
these shores ; inspiring a courage, confirming a resolu- 
tion, and accomplishing an enterprise, for the parallel 
of which men vainly search the records of the world." 1 

This temper brings one, as a matter of course, into 
elemental conflict with those who hold that the law of 
the state, or the custom of society, is. the ultimate 
rule ; which is simply equivalent to saying that there 
is nothing higher in the universe than " the low-hung 
sky of Time ; " with those who affirm, too, that what 
is for a man's profit and pleasure is always permissi- 
ble, certainly if involving no damage to others ; with 
those who hold that any ideal law is a matter of poetic 
fancy and ethereal illusion, and that practical maxims, 
like those of Poor Richard, derived from economic 
experience, are the true guide of human life. Neither 
of these ethical tendencies has anything whatever of 
the Puritan in it. i 

But when one affirms an invisible law, — "vera lex," 
as Cicero says, " recta ratio, . . . diffxisa in omnes, 
constans, sempiternal 2 — above all human rule and 

1 An Address delivered before the New England Society in the city 
of New York, December 23, 1839, by Eobert C. Winthrop. Boston: 
Perkins & Marvin. 1840. 

2 "Est qnidem vera lex, recta ratio, naturae congruens, diffusa in 
omnes, constans, sempiterna; quae vocet ad officium jubendo, vetando 
a fraude deterreat; quae tamen neque probos frustra jubet aut vetat, 
nee improbos jubendo aut vetando movet. Huic legi nee obrogari fas 
est, neque derogari ex hac aliquid licet, neque tota abrogari potest : 
nee vero aut per senatum, aut per populum solvi hac lege possumus: 

419 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

custom, which he is eternally bound to obey, and 
whose sublime precepts he must accomplish, whatever 
the cost and whatever the result — there is the essential 
Puritan spirit. The man may be absurdly mistaken 
in particulars ; the circumstances and the drapery of 
his life may be sumptuous or mean ; he may be on 
the throne, or brooding alone in sterile fields; his 
name among men may be anything you please : 
but his moral temper is always the same, whether 
in heathendom or in Christendom, in the middle 
age or in this age, in Massachusetts or beyond the 
Pacific. 

That moral temper associates him with many from 
whom in other things he stands widely apart. You 
see it in Stuart Mill as clearly, perhaps, as in any old 
stoic ; in Emerson, and in Whittier, whose recent 
birthday the country honored, as in any early New 
England divine. The law of righteousness, dimly dis- 
cerned, perhaps, but affirmed without debate and ap- 
plied without flinching — that is the element. Goethe 
spoke to Eckermann, you may remember, of his dis- 
like for a too tender conscience, which tended, he 
thought, to fix men's moral view on themselves, and to 
make them hypochondriacal ; and elsewhere, in a pas- 
sage of his autobiography, he congratulates himself on 

neque est quserendus explanator, ant interpres ejus alius: nee erit alia 
lex Komae, alia Athenis; alia nunc, alia posthac; sed et omnes gentes 
et omni tempore una lex, et sempiterna, et immutabilis continebit: 
unusque erit communis quasi magister et imperator omnium Deus, ille 
legis hujus inventor, disceptator, lator; cui qui non parebit, ipse se 
fugiet, ac naturam hominis aspernatus, hoc ipso luet maximas poenas, 
etiam si cetera supplicia, quae putantur, effugerit." — De Eepub. iii. 17. 
Lactantius' words are: "Dei lex, quam Marcus Tullius in libro de 
Eep. tertio psene divina voce depinxit. " — Div. Inst. vi. 8. 

420 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

having left behind a certain anguish of conscience, 
with the altar and the Church, to all which he felt 
himself thenceforth superior. But Goethe, with all 
his many-sided genius and his surpassing accomplish- 
ments, was as little of a Puritan — with the possible 
exception of Alcibiades — as ever set foot upon the 
planet. 

It, is noticeable, too, that with this intense sense of 
the authority of righteousness, comes naturally, though 
not universally, a profound assurance of a Personal 
Power at the head of the universe, who is working for 
righteousness, and who means to make it triumphant 
in the world. 

Of course this is the Biblical idea, on which all 
promises and provisions of the Scripture are based and 
set. But it is by no means universally accepted, even 
among those who daily walk beneath the light of the 
Scripture. Many feel, practically, in our time as in 
other times, that substantially the present course of 
things is to go on to the end — industry, commerce, 
war, crime, pleasure, punishment, following each other 
in ceaseless succession; sometimes right uppermost, 
and sometimes wrong, even as now ; that education 
will be widened, inventions multiplied, wealth in- 
creased, but that the old tangle of experience will re- 
main, with the same confused elements contending in 
it, till the completion of the history of mankind. 

The Puritan is he who looks for the absolute final 
dominion of righteousness on the earth, without which 
society never can be perfect, through which alone true 
welfare can be reached, in which the earth shall.be 
illumined and morally crowned; who looks for this 
because he believes there is always One, at the head 

421 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

of the Universe, intent on this end and sure to achieve 
it. The moral argument for God is essentially su- 
preme with such a man. The ethical quality is to 
him the highest in the Most High. To hear God 
described as " the sum of natural forces," or as a being 
of power and skill, with no sovereignty of an eternal 
righteousness in him, is to such an one the final offense 
against reason and conscience. God is sublime to 
him, not so much because braiding the light, or 
launching the lightnings, or bending the heavens in 
an arch of circles which no telescope can search, as 
because He accepts righteousness as the law ; and His 
government is august because He will make this uni- 
versal. Here is the key to the Puritan theology, 
wherever that has appeared in history. Here is the 
dominant note in the personal Puritan life. It is a 
determining fact in character. It associates souls in a 
mystic and wide communion. Men may call such a 
man Quaker or Catholic, Cavalier or Roundhead, 
heretic or believer: he is as truly of the spiritual 
Puritan stock as if he had fought with Cromwell at 
Naseby, had faced the flame with the cheerfulness of 
Ridley, or had worshiped in the earliest and rudest 
huts of the Plymouth colony. 

I have specified three elements in the Puritan spirit. 
A fourth one must be added : a profound sense of the 
invisible world as the immortal realm of righteousness, 
and of the dignity of the nature of man, who is con- 
stitutionally related to that, and to the righteousness 
which is sovereign in it. 

The dignity of man's nature, I say, you observe. 
This is by no means to be confounded with any high 
estimate put on his character. On the other hand, 

422 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

the higher one's estimate of his nature, in its inborn 
relationship to righteousness and to God, the sharper 
will be, usually, his criticism of himself, and perhaps 
his moral condemnation of others. It is the man of 
Epicurean life and thought who thinks too lightly or 
too highly of himself, having no noble ethical standard 
by which to try his moral life. The austere judg- 
ment of one who reveres God as righteous will strike 
with sharpest and hardest stroke on all conscious folly 
and sin ; and despair is apt to be nearer to such an 
one than any self-exaltation. But the estimate of the 
human personality is wonderfully different in the 
Epicurean, to whom life is only a holiday game, and 
in the Puritan, to whom it is an arena for sublime 
struggle and heroic achievement in the service of 
righteousness. " Bury me with my dogs " is a saying 
which has sometimes been attributed to Frederick the 
Great, as he drew toward death. It might have been 
said by him, though probably it was not. To the 
Puritan the very body is sacred, as having been the 
shrine of that personal soul which is allied w T ith the 
immensities. In himself, as in others, he recognizes 
profoundly supernal relations. 

Man is to him naturally a great person ; with great 
powers for discerning the truth, and serving the 
cause of a divine justice ; on a solemn and divine 
errand in the world; constitutionally affined to in- 
visible spheres, and to Him who is supreme amid 
them ; not far beneath the level of celestial intelli- 
gences ; to whom it is natural that there should come 
divine teachings, and even present divine impulses ; 
for whom no miraculous intervention is too amazing 
to be believed ; before whom arises the great White 

423 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

Throne. Differences of human condition are little. 
The question of more or less culture, of more or less 
success in the world, is of no account to one who 
looks thus on the nature of man. The personal soul, 
in castle or cabin, in palaces or in chains — that is the 
supreme thing on the planet ; for which, indeed, the 
planet was builded and is maintained ; by the pres- 
ence of which the earth becomes a vital and a signifi- 
cant part of the universe which has God in it, with 
ranks and orders of intelligent spirits. For this the 
Cross was set, under shadowed heavens, on the 
amazed and quaking earth. Above this are opened 
the gates of light. 

This honor for the soul, as related to God and to 
the holy and bright Immensity, is as essentially as 
anything else a characteristic force and element in the 
Puritan spirit. Masson gives a perfect illustration of 
it when, in his Life of Milton, he describes the great 
poet, at his graduation from Cambridge in 1632, two 
years after some of our ancestors reached these shores, 
as characterized by a solemn and even an austere de- 
meanor of mind, connected with which, he says, was 
a haughty yet not immodest self-esteem, since he 
recognized himself as an endowed servant of the Most 
High, and was accordingly daringly resentful of any 
interference, from whatever quarter, with his com- 
plete intellectual freedom. That was precisely the 
Puritan spirit. Even the portraits of Puritans show 
it, whether by Van Dyck on the other side of the 
ocean, or by Copley on this. Men have thought of 
this temper as wholly subdued, if not overwhelmed, 
in its unquestioning reverence toward God. His 
authority it has not doubted, because his character 

424 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

has arisen before it, glorious in holiness. But it has 
been the most imperious temper of the world in its 
assertion of man's independence, as responsible to 
God ; as already by nature what he would make it 
morally, by operations of grace, his son and heir. 
This is the temper in which the Scriptures have been 
studied ; in which preaching has become the great 
function which it has been in the Puritan congrega- 
tions — whether performed in the Genevan gown, or 
in the surplice, or in neither. This is the temper in 
which learning has been cultivated with incessant as- 
siduity ; in which Harvard College was established, in 
the midst of extreme poverty and weakness, to be- 
come the vast and opulent university in which to-day 
the land rejoices, and from which it takes a beautiful 
renown. Such enthusiasm for learning never will 
cease while the Puritan conception of man's nature 
continues. 

We have noticed some principal elements in the 
Puritan spirit. Let us observe, and with equal care, 
some grave and palpable deficiencies in it. To it be- 
long, not unnaturally, the defects of its virtues, and 
the roughnesses of its strength. It is not easy for any 
man, or any body of men, to have the armor of right- 
eousness equally and fully on the right hand and on 
the left. And the evident deficiencies or faults which 
appear in connection with the Puritan temper are 
such as to excite, among multitudes of men, a very 
vigorous dissent and dislike. They are often assailed 
with the sharpest and most contemptuous ridicule, are 
sometimes encountered with the fiercest animosity. 

One of them, certainly, is a want of interest in 
things esthetic ; in the products of fancy, of artistic 

425 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

genius, of dexterous skill, in what has it for its office 
to add the ornament of beauty to life. It is not by 
accident that the Puritan spirit has been often icon- 
oclastic, shattering statues or burning them into lime, 
melting in furnaces the rich and precious monumental 
brasses, shivering the loveliest stained glass as if it 
were frost-work on the window, cutting pictures in 
pieces, and once, at least, offering twenty thousand 
pounds, as it is said in my family tradition that a 
Puritan did to Oliver Cromwell, for permission to burn 
the pile of York Minster. 

Not for the Puritan, in his reserved and haughty 
consciousness of supernal relations, is the dainty sump- 
tuousness of color, the symmetric grace of moulded 
marbles, the rhythmic reach and stately height of 
noble architecture, the pathos and the mystery of 
music. His spirit has been too intense, his mind too 
heavily charged with urgent and imperial themes, his 
will too set and strenuous for achievement in the 
world-battle to which he feels himself engaged, to 
allow him to pause upon things like these. They have 
seemed to him glittering and deceptive gauds ; tin- 
seled shows, hiding the sun ; products of the pleasure- 
loving part of man's nature, not ministering to truth 
and righteousness, and to man's supreme welfare. He 
has therefore dashed them before him as frail things, 
of no moral worth, and liable even to be dangerously 
alluring. 

He has not remembered that to some minds a relish 
for what is lovely in fancy and in art is as native as 
color to the violet, fragrance to the rose, or song to 
the bird ; that God's own mind must eternally teem 
with beauty, since he lines with it the tiny sea-shell, 

426 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

and tints the fish, . and tones the hidden fibers of 
trees, and flashes it on breast and crest of flying birds, 
and breaks the tumbling avalanche into myriads of 
feathery crystals, and builds the skies in a splendor, to 
a rhythm, which no thought can match. It has been 
a narrowness, though a narrowness that has had depth 
in it, and that has not been merely superficial and 
noisy. And it has been a narrowness for which the 
Puritan has suffered, in the diminution of his influence 
in the world, and in the darkening of his fame, more 
than others for conspicuous crimes. I recognize the 
fact, and have no contention to make against it, 
though I cannot but regret it with all my heart. 

It is obvious, too, that with this disesteem of things 
esthetic has been often associated a foolish contempt 
for the minor elegancies of life, of letters, of personal 
manners, and of social equipment, with sometimes a 
positively dangerous disdain of the common, innocent 
pleasures of life. 

Unquestionably, and for the same reason, — its in- 
tensity of conviction, its supreme devotion to what it 
conceives as the absolute righteousness, — the typical 
historic Puritan spirit has had in it something harsh 
and rigid, repellent, indeed, and almost relentless, to- 
ward the minor refinements of thought and speech. 
It is too downright, and determinately insistent, to 
give sympathy to these. There have been, as there 
will be, signal exceptions ; elegant scholars, accom- 
plished artists, noble gentlemen, to whom a delicate 
courtesy was an instinct ; but, constitutionally, the 
spirit which I am broadly describing does not spe- 
cially care for what is charming, graceful, picturesque 
in society. The dainty humor, the choice epigram, 

427 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

the sparkling persiflage of the salon are not a.t all 
within its sphere. It is so essentially predetermined 
to great ideas and majestical purposes, that these 
things appear to it slight, evanescent, of no real ac- 
count. Its very wit is sharp, if not saturnine, has a 
gleaming edge, and is meant to serve practical uses. 
And toward the pleasant enjoyments of life it is apt 
to take an attitude almost cynical, in which there is 
both folly and peril. 

Not everything is true, we know, which has been 
said of it in this regard. Household pleasures have 
been familiar and delightful in Puritan families. The 
Thanksgiving festival, — a kind of secular Christmas, 
— now happily naturalized throughout the land, has 
been one of the products of the Puritan spirit, rising 
like a majestic date-palm from amid the gleaming ice 
of New England. But certainly its conception of life 
on the earth has always been that of a battle and a 
march, under watchful heavens, toward superlative 
issues, with great destinies involved. And so disdain 
of the soft and pleasant things in life has never been 
unnatural to it. It fears in them a subtle seduction 
from nobler aims, perhaps sometimes suspects this 
where it does not exist ; and for itself, it would be 
always girded and armed, and shod with swift sandals, 
for righteous strife. 

Of course there is much in this which, to the gen- 
eral feeling of the world, is wholly unlovely ; and 
there is much, it may not be denied, which involves a 
positive moral danger. For pleasure, so it be innocent 
in itself, is not a mere sedative or emollient to the 
spirit. It is absolutely recreative, as the very word 
" recreation " implies. Within reasonable limits, it is 

428 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

that which keeps the moral temper sound and sweet, 
which refreshes the will when it is weary, and rein- 
forces it for invigorated action, making the face of the 
sternest man to beam and shine with a radiance from 
within. Any ascetic intolerance of true pleasure, or 
any habitual indifference to it, tends to moodiness, or 
even morbidness, of mind. It tends to self-isolation 
from a world whose playfulness and whose pleasant- 
ness are distrusted ; from a world which is regarded 
as one to be refused and conquered, not to be enjoyed. 
It has tended, indeed, sometimes at least, to worse 
effects still, to a wild and fierce license, coming in re- 
action from it, and as a final alternative to it. It is 
not monasticism alone which has shown these effects. 
There are passages in the history of Puritan families 
which almost luridly illustrate the same. The mod- 
ern gay insolence of youth was of course never toler- 
ated in the Puritan society, even when it took much 
milder forms than that which angered the ancient 
bears. But sometimes, also, the glad and comely 
pleasure of youth was too little regarded, was too 
sternly repressed. The effort to expel nature with 
pitchforks is not often successful. One may, perhaps, 
cap a geyser with stone, but look out then for more 
formidable jets ! And it is a fact which has philoso- 
phy in it, that the most reckless profligates whom our 
history has known have come, sometimes, from the 
saintliest and the most scrupulous households. 

Another defect is still more vital ; that toward the 
more delicate sensibilities of the soul, especially as 
they appear in minds disturbed, unsettled and ques- 
tioning, and in hearts reaching tenderly forth for 
stimulation or solace, there is often a lack of affection- 

429 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

ate sympathy in the Puritan spirit. There is even 
sometimes a hard and oppressive intolerance toward 
such. 

Certain great ideas have authority for that spirit, 
and it feels and declares that they should have for all. 
The immutable laws of righteousness "must go on, 
though a million hearts are bruised before them. 
There is, not unfrequently, among minds which are 
not of the finer and superior order, a prodigious con- 
fidence in purely logical processes, as availing to solve 
the highest problems which can be presented to hu- 
man thought. Even the Cambridge Platonists, with 
their sympathizers at Oxford, were regarded in their 
time, and have been regarded since by the commoner 
minds, with a certain disfavor, though the honored 
name of Emmanuel College was above them. The 
spiritual intuition of truth, the sublime views of it 
which appeal immediately to a spirit in holy fellow- 
ship with God, are apt to command too little respect 
from the downright and practical Puritan mind. An 
inference, to that mind, is as certain as a vision. It 
sees no shading, and tolerates no internal hesitation. 
" Logic is logic. That 's what I say " — as in the won- 
derful "one-horse shay." 

There is at times, no doubt, something hard, im- 
perious, dictatorial, in this spirit. It is not as sensi- 
tively gentle and responsive, as discerning and patient, 
toward diffident souls as was that of the Master. It 
repeats his denunciatory words toward the strong and 
the haughty, more easily than his affectionate minis- 
try to the questioning and the sad. It catches the 
roll of the thunder from Sinai, and makes it reverber- 
ate over the centuries, more readily than it adapts 

430 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

itself to the loftier office of wiping all tears from every 
eye. 

One of the most striking modern instances of this 
spirit, among literary men, has been in Carlyle, who 
did not accept many Puritan doctrines, but whose 
Scotch blood seethed with its temper in every micro- 
scopic globule; and in whom sternness, rather than 
sweetness, was certainly the prevailing trait. Sar- 
castic jeers at human infirmity were oftener on his 
lips than words of compassionate sympathy with it. 
A nation, to him, was "of forty millions, mostly 
fools." And while multitudes of minds have been 
seized and stirred by his well-nigh prophetic words, 
as by almost no others spoken in our time, a sad soul, 
teased with questionings, troubled and tremulous in 
anxious solicitudes, crying like a child in the night for 
help, would hardly conceivably have gone to him. In 
a lonely grief any one of us would, I am sure, have 
appealed far sooner to men with not a tithe of his 
terrible genius. 

In more or less distinctness, we see the same thing 
widely in history. The Puritan temper is strong and 
stalwart. It grasps great themes, confronts great op- 
positions, and reckons with great issues ; but it is not 
essentially gentle, tolerant, sympathetic, tender, in- 
tent upon leading men with delicate hand out of tan- 
gles of doubt, out of weakness and fear into spiritual 
tranquillity, out of sadness into peace. It is too 
affirmative to be wholly sympathetic ; too surely re- 
lated, in its intense consciousness, to the supreme 
circles of the universe, to regard as it ought the 
weary and timid and half-despondent. So multitudes 
of men resent and hate it. They scoff at and scout 

431 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

it, and would put it, if they could, in a perpetual 
pillory of history. 

Mrs. Stowe has touched this, again and again, with 
her unsurpassed delicacy and strength, in some of her 
sketches of New England life. Perhaps no one of us, 
in whose veins flows the blood of the early immigra- 
tion, could go back to the start in his family history 
without finding examples. The sensitive minds, the 
minds in which the moral dominated the logical, — the 
imaginative, and especially the feminine minds, — were 
often oppressed with terrific self -questionings, in the 
shade of the woods, in the comparative loneliness of 
life and its austere stillness under the solemn and 
silent stars, and in face-to-face view of the mystery 
of the future. An introverted thought started sur- 
misings which it could not silence and could not 
expel; and Satanic suggestions seemed sometimes 
inpalpably to lurk amid the shifting and darkling 
shadows of untracked woods. The cases were cer- 
tainly not uncommon, in which no ministry, save 
of logical deductions from what were esteemed theo- 
logical jprincvpia, was addressed to such minds ; 
in which, indeed, their suffering lasted, sometimes 
deepening into utter despondency, till cleared and 
dispersed in the supreme illumination of death. I 
do not hold the Puritan temper directly, or cer- 
tainly universally, responsible for this; but it has a 
defect in this direction which no fair mind will forget 
or conceal. 

But if such are its deficiencies, which we may not 
hide, let us not forget that it has also certain magnifi- 
cent qualities and superlative traits, which surely we 
ought, as well, to recognize. In times of great trial, 

432 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

amid the tremendous emergencies of affairs, these are 
certain to appear. 

It has, for one thing, a masterful sincerit}^. If any 
fineness of literary form is not a matter of importance 
to the Puritan, — as it usually is not, — if he fails to ap- 
preciate the subtle charm of modulated sentences, the 
finished luster of choice aphorisms, or the iridescent 
interplay of humor, this splendid and powerful grace 
of sincerity belongs to his temper, and gives it a dig- 
nity impossible otherwise. Men may charge him with 
sternness, and with being too little regardful of others ; 
but he is not apt to be temporizing in policy, ambigu- 
ous or diplomatic in forms of expression. Naturally 
his spirit hates the stucco which would represent 
stone ; and while it will not be anxious, perhaps, to 
gild iron columns, or to crown them with acanthus 
leaves, it will insist on their being iron, and not a 
frame of painted wood. 

I do not think men can anywhere be found whose 
words have squared more absolutely with their convic- 
tions than did those of the Puritans of England toward 
king and prelate ; than have those of many on this 
side of the ocean, in whom was the original Puritan 
temper, who have set forth conclusions sure at once to 
be violently assailed. Sincerity, at least, has been in 
the utterance — such sincerity as Ruskin long ago elo- 
quently expounded as a characteristic condition and 
element of all great art ; a sincerity which, as he says, 
" rules invention with a rod of iron ; which subdues 
all powers, impulses, imaginations, to the arbitrament 
of a merciless justice, and the obedience of an incor- 
ruptible verity." 

It is a characteristic not of great art alone, but of 

BB 433 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

all great life — this majestic sincerity, which means 
what it says; which does not evade and does not 
equivocate ; which gives weight to words, simplicity 
and impressiveness to all forms of action ; and which 
makes the longest uncouth sentences that ever were 
heard from a Puritan pulpit reverberate with the tone 
of personal earnestness, as with music of deepest bells. 
The Puritan statesmanship is apt to be candid. The 
Puritan laws are sure to have penalties ; and if Puri- 
tan thought has the impulse and the power to wreak 
itself on expression in the true poetic form, it makes 
the poetry glowing and incandescent, shot through 
with the singular heat and splendor of an upright and 
fervent soul. For myself, I would rather there were 
less of elegance and more of sincerity in letters and in 
life, wherever the English tongue is spoken. If that 
is a consummation not reached in our time, it will cer- 
tainly not be because the dauntless Puritan temper has 
not distinctly assisted toward it. 

Still further, too, if fancy is not active in the Puri- 
tan on lighter themes, he has before his mind a majestic 
ideal, of a universal kingdom of righteousness and 
truth, which is to include all human society, and to 
shape that society by its supreme laws. 

This is essentially the grandest ideal ever recognized 
in the world ; with which no other may be compared. 
The aim of the Roman Empire, of the Napoleonic, of 
the Russian, or of the British, has been simply limited 
and gross in comparison. It passes all other schemes 
of mankind, as opalescent mountain masses, seen from 
some fortunate coigne of vantage, surpass the cabins 
and villages about them. It has appealed, with a su- 
preme summons, to greatest spirits. A refrain from 

434 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

it was in Dante's song, and in Milton's. It is older far 
than the vision of John in the Apocalypse. A light 
from it gleamed upon the Hebrew economy. It was 
this, and nothing else, which the early colonists hoped 
and strove to realize here, in their narrow and stern 
surroundings. It is this which their descendants are 
striving to-day to further and assist, in their costly 
and cosmical missionary work. 

It is impressive to see how, in the early New Eng- 
land, when the distances were great, the surfaces deso- 
late, when churches were bleak and services austere, 
and when the Bay psalm-book marked the only trou- 
badour period in the unadorned annals, this vision of 
the future, in its superlative moral beauty, was the 
constant poem both of house and of church. Where- 
soever it appeared, and left its luster on the life in the 
wilderness, it appeared, as it still appears to us looking 
back, an illuminating ideal, impelling to the noblest 
endeavors, lifting the spirit toward highest levels, 
rounding the confused and noisy history of the time 
and of the world with " a sevenfold chorus of hallelu- 
jahs and harping symphonies." JS"o other fact is more 
characteristic of the Puritan spirit, and none, I think, 
is more significant or more impressive in any exhibi- 
tion of human temper. 

It is certainly to be said, too. that if the Puritan 
spirit is not naturally strong on the side of moral ten- 
derness, it has a superb and shining courage, as well 
as a capacity for tremendous enthusiasm, and for a 
self-devotion conspicuous and complete. It is not 
afraid of what man can do, so long as it feels that God 
and his righteousness are on its side. It has been 
frankly and gladly ready to face not only the fierce 

" 435 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

charge of cavaliers, but loneliness, exile, the sea and 
the wilderness, the unknown perils of a soil and an air 
which civilization had not tried, the cruel craft of sav- 
age enemies. It has gone out from happy homes for 
this, and from lovely surroundings, and has not flinched 
before the hazard and lifelong loss, any more than it 
had flinched before the frowning face of kings. 

It has in it a fortitude which is nobler than bra- 
very, as the current of the stream is mightier in mo- 
mentum than the sparkles which flash and foam on 
its surface. Such fortitude belongs to the convictions 
behind it. It is essentially involved in the assurance 
of God, of an imperative righteousness, of the uni- 
verse as one in which the moral order is supreme, and 
of the immortality in which that order shall be reg- 
nant and eternal. So it cannot give way, any more 
than the rock can before arrows or winds or the leap 
of wild beasts. Whoever has a true Puritan behind 
him, in any stress of contention and struggle, may 
know that there is one on whose succor and support 
he can steadfastly depend. A law of nature is 
scarcely less mutable. The poise of the planet is 
hardly more constant. " The Guard may die, but it 
never surrenders." 

And yet further : if this spirit has often too little 
regard for perplexed and suffering individual souls, 
it has also a triumphant disregard of institutions, 
however mighty, however ancient, if they are not 
characterized by what it apprehends as a divine right- 
eousness, and are not ready to submit to and to serve 
that. 

It is this which has brought this imperative temper 
constantly into conflict with such institutions, and has 

436 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

made it seem often only ruthlessly destructive. It has 
in fact been tearing down, to build up on what it 
could not but hold to be nobler lines. Church hier- 
archies, state aristocracies, institutions of royalty or 
of empire, have been nothing to it, except as related 
to the supreme ends of God's righteous kingdom. 
Miters and scepters have been paltry baubles before 
the intensity of its convictions. Pontifical thrones 
have seemed mere offensive obstructions in its path, to 
be swept away as the cannon fire sweeps away earth- 
works and abattis- before the shouting onset of an 
army. Even majority votes, which to the American 
mind seem to be specially hedged with divinity, are 
hay and stubble before its intensity. Individual re- 
sponsibility is its fundamental law. It expects to con- 
tinue in the minority, till the earth has been renewed 
to the righteousness of God ; and it is ready to wait 
for vindication and victory in the ages of larger light 
to come. It is essentially an innovating and a pioneer 
temper, aggressive and resolute for whatever may lift 
society forward, toward superior levels, more generous 
times. As it formerly met pain and persecution, 
without complaint and without reserve, so now it 
meets an adverse vote. As it denounced prelates 
aforetime, and set its foot on the neck of kings, so 
now it attacks any interest of society, or any organ- 
ized institution, which seems to it opposed to right- 
eousness ; and it is never to be satisfied till such an 
institution has been overthrown. " First pure, then 
peaceable," is its favorite maxim ; and the terrible 
strength of an intense purpose is always behind its 
moral attack. 

It needs the guidance of hignest wisdom, and may 

437 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

well offer the considerate prayer of the Scotch divine, 
" Be pleased, O Lord, to guide us aright : for thou 
know est that, whether we be right or wrong, we be 
very determined." But no man can make or face an 
issue with this Puritan spirit without doing well to 
count beforehand the cost. I see the danger involved 
at this point ; but I see, as well, the temper which has 
rectified a thousand intrenched and haughty abuses, 
and has made the world far lovelier to live in ; and I 
will not forget the lowly graves from which it has 
sprung, when enjoying the harvest of our more free 
and fruitful society. 

Yet one thing more. If the Puritan spirit is com- 
paratively careless of pleasant things on earth, and is 
apt to fear them as too dangerous allurements, it has 
the clearest and surest vision of things celestial, and 
draws from them solace and strength, and high in- 
spiration. 

It is not a temper which works for wages. Men 
have heaped all manner of scorn upon it for maintain- 
ing, here and there, that a man should be willing to 
be damned in order to be saved. I admit the justice 
of much which has been said. No test of that un- 
scriptural sort, fabricated by metaphysical logic, 
ought ever to be presented ; and this one is offensive 
in many special ways. It is not even harmless, as the 
man thought the end of the thermometer might be, 
which he had bitten off and swallowed when it was 
testing his temperature, though he could not perceive 
that it was doing him any good. A test like this 
famous one dishonors God, by assuming that he can 
be willing to condemn one who seeks to turn in peni- 
tence to him ; and it confuses and bewilders the mind 

438 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

which is reaching after him in the person of his Son. 
It is justly repulsive to modern thought, and it never 
was favored by any large number of even the exact- 
ing Puritan divines. But it must be remembered, in 
absolute justice, that it represented precisely the state 
and attitude of mind in those who first proposed it as 
a question; and that never until one does not care 
what may happen, in this world or the next, so long 
as he does right, is he finally and utterly free of the 
Universe, with all his powers in perfect poise and 
grandest play. If righteousness required it, and the 
glory of God under the gospel, they who offered this 
test were willing to face infernal fires ; and they felt 
that others should be so too. Their primary error un- 
doubtedly was in transferring a transcendent, an al- 
most superhuman attitude of mind, to the beginnings 
of Christian experience ; in requiring from the babe 
in Christ what might possibly, at least in exceptional 
cases, have been accepted by the sublimely impas- 
sioned missionary or martyr. 

But while such absolute submission to God has 
been encouraged, and been even required, the Puritan 
thought has always been fixed on the supreme and 
celestial results of a divine life upon the earth, and 
has kept before it the radiant consummation of the 
eternal plan of the Most High. The Apocalypse has 
been to it the favorite book of all the Scriptures. The 
sunset-splendor has been no more evident to the phys- 
ical eye than the Heavenly City has been to the heart. 
The Cross of Christ has been interpreted by its rela- 
tion to those issues of life beyond all compass of 
human thought ; and the mission of the Comforter 
has been felt to be to bring an earnest of wisdom and 

439 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

love, of spiritual peace and of holy power, only fully 
attainable in the illustrious sphere of the immortals : 
as if blossoming branches had been flung from over 
the walls of paradise ; as if fragrant odors had secretly 
stolen between the gates. The earth itself has be- 
come a sacred place to men, with this high expecta- 
tion arching its bow above the household, turning 
darkness to day in the dreariest life, and lighting the 
hills and bathing the sandy or rocky shores as in the 
up-spring of the immortal morning ! The waste and 
the wood have been to such only the wilderness which 
men were taking, as Lady Arbella Johnson was said 
to have taken New England, on the way to heaven. 
Over the rudest letters and life of the early colonies 
brooded this ethereal splendor. Their very funeral 
hymns throbbed with the impulse of the great expec- 
tation. The living Puritan, like the dying Stephen, 
not unfrequently saw the heavens opened, and the Son 
of man standing on the right hand of God ; and his face, 
too, was to those around him "as the face of an angel." 
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have spoken frankly, with 
too great slightness and rapidity of treatment, but 
with such a treatment as the circumstances of prepara- 
tion have allowed me, of the elements involved in the 
Puritan spirit, as that has appeared not here alone, 
but at large in history ; of its deficiencies, or positive 
faults, which even its admirers have to recognize ; and 
of the sovereign qualities and traits which it also ex- 
hibits, and exhibits with most commanding force in 
critical times, and in the front of great emergency. 
It cannot be needful, then, to argue that this temper 
has not been local or provincial, but in the truest sense 
cosmical ; not limited to any one period in history, 

440 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

but common to all, and sometimes appearing most re- 
markably in those that were most unfriendly to it. It 
is as old as history ; and it always has shown itself 
with clearest manifestation in those of noblest nature 
and power, who have done the most memorable work 
for the world. Men have made kings out of rubbish, 
and statesmen, so called, out of pedants and rogues. 
They have tried, at any rate, to make scholars out of 
those too lazy to work, soldiers out of padded uni- 
forms, philanthropists out of cranks. But it takes a 
strong man, and a sound one, to be developed into a 
Puritan ; as men forge cannon out of grim metal, and 
do not fashion them oi papier-mache. 

Puritanism has its sources and its securities in the 
supreme elements of human nature ; in the discerning 
and imperative conscience, which affirms right as the 
ultimate law in the universe of mind ; in the intuitive 
reason, which declares the certitude of invisible truth ; 
in that divine side of the soul which is in direct cor- 
respondence with its Author, and which sees the eter- 
nal justice and might on the field of human combat, 
more clearly than in any roll of the earthquake, or 
any far-shining figures of the stars. It has its strength 
in that commanding will-power which is ready for 
effort, endurance, consecration, which finds opposition 
an incentive to achievement, and before which resist- 
ant forces or circumstances, whatever they may be, 
have got either to bend or to break. In these great 
powers the Puritan spirit finds always its roots and 
reinforcements. And, therefore, wherever these have 
been shown, it has appeared ; wherever these are to 
be shown hereafter, it will appear, till the earth and 
the heavens shall be no more. 

441 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

Moses was a Puritan, — in fact, the sublime exem- 
plar and type of the Puritan spirit; who could not 
speak in the phrase of courts, and who knew that he 
could not ; but to whom Pharaoh, against God, with 
whatever chariots and horsemen and rock-built tem- 
ples, was no more than a temporary bulrush of the 
Nile against atmospheres and suns ; to whom the law 
of righteousness, the kingdom of the Holiest, the 
divine intervention for the guidance of his people, 
were as fleecy clouds, inlaid with fire, moving before 
him to lead the way and burnish the stern and rocky 
path ; who was just as strong against popular rebellion 
as he had been against imperial threat ; who bowed 
submissively to that divine will which sent him to die 
alone upon NTebo, and whom God buried in that 
austere and lonely funeral, the most majestic of time. 
It has been by reason of his indomitable Puritan 
temper, touched of God, that Moses has towered in 
colossal proportions, before all generations ; so that, 
as Theodore Parker said of him, " His name is plowed 
into the history of the world, and his influence never 
can die." 

Hezekiah was a Puritan, no one can doubt, what- 
ever temporary weaknesses he showed : who recon- 
secrated the defiled temple ; who swept away, with 
besom of fire, the lovely high places in which lust was 
taking on it the semblance and the sanctions of wor- 
ship ; who broke in pieces the brazen serpent, in 
the most daring and splendid iconoclasm which the 
world has seen, calling it in contempt " JSTehushtan " 
— a piece of brass. 

Daniel was a Puritan, as well as a statesman and a 
seer ; in the face of presidents, princes, and the king, 

443 



TfiE PURITAN SPIRIT 

when the decree had gone forth against prayer, before 
watchful eyes, and with the fierceness of lions near, 
going into his chamber, with its windows opened to- 
ward Jerusalem, and three times a day kneeling, pray- 
ing, and giving thanks, "as he did aforetime." 

Jeremiah was a Puritan: with rough raiment, 
ascetic habit, hated by people, priests and kings, flung 
into prison, eating bread of affliction, and with tears 
for his drink, yet standing against wickedness like a 
brazen wall ; with a faith unfailing buying the field 
on which the invading host was encamped, to demon- 
strate his certainty that again it should be possessed 
by Israel ; his life a long martyrdom, his death, per- 
haps, a furious murder ; yet bearing witness always, 
without impatience, but with no bated breath, to the 
truth of the Most High. One does not wonder that 
so many of the devout among our own Puritans 
sought a chrism of his majestic spirit, in naming after 
him their precious first-born. 

In fact, to state it in a word, the whole Old Testa- 
ment is vital and commanding with the examples of 
the Puritan spirit. It is not here and there, alone ; it 
breaks to light at multitudinous points, as the sun- 
shine through vapors, as the silver-gleams through all 
rifts of the rock in the wealthy mine. It was this 
which made the venerable Testament so dear to our 
fathers, and so familiar. We read it, perhaps, with 
daintier and reluctant eyes. But they, with their 
more virile temper, their experience of hardship, in 
their secluded homes in the wilderness, saw in the 
ancient Testament not history only, theology, or 
praise, but the glory of man reflecting and celebrating 
the glory of God. It was a Scripture in life which 

443 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES . 

smote and stirred their strong emotion. Not merely as 
to Deborah under the palm-tree, or to Ezekiel by the 
river of Chebar, was the majesty of the Eternal mani- 
fest to them. The whole Hebrew economy bore its 
radiance, and declared its effect ; an economy stern, 
sublime, working for freedom because binding to God ; 
training men to be careless of the world and its lusts, 
that they might be champions for the kingdom un- 
seen. This was the lambent cloud of glory which 
filled all Puritan temples when the ancient Scriptures 
were opened within them. This made a presence- 
chamber of the Infinite in each Puritan home. 

We may not say that the Master was a Puritan, any 
more than we may apply to him any other of the 
special and divisional names known among men, his 
spirit being wholly sublimed and complete in perfect 
wisdom and perfect love. But this energetic and 
magnificent element was certainly in him, as shown 
by his attitude toward Pharisees and rulers, by his 
magisterial declarations of truth, and his terrific pre- 
dictions of the judgment to come. The Puritan has 
never found anything hostile in the temper of Christ, 
though he might sometimes have been attuned by 
that temper to a more benignant and winning grace. 

In John the same strong element appears, with all 
his temper of mystical love, and that lofty spiritual 
intuition of truth which has made his Gospel a source 
of perpetual wonder and delight to all sympathetic 
and lofty minds. His first Epistle is alive with its 
power; and it was an unswerving Puritan hand 
which traced the terrible crash of conflict in which 
righteousness conquers, and empires go down, till out 
of heaven descends in triumph the city of God. 

444 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

Paul was a Puritan, par eminence, in his view of 
truth and in his practical temper, in his hardihood of 
will and his vehement affirmations, and in his 
magnetic readiness for battle, on behalf of the con- 
victions at which the Greek laughed and the Jew was 
enraged. Wherever this spirit has appeared in the 
world, since his head fell on the Ostian road, it has 
turned instinctively to his Epistles for instruction and 
incitement. His spirit has spoken in all the words 
which have smitten like cannon-shot upon powerful 
abuses. 

Outside, altogether, of the Biblical history, such ex- 
amples appear. Men speak sometimes as if this spirit 
had been peculiar, or at least most familiar, to those of 
the Hebrew times and training, or, in modern years, 
to those, perhaps, of the English stock. Not at all. 
It belongs, as I have said, to the strong forces of 
human nature, and has appeared, therefore, wherever 
these have vitally emerged ; among those of Hellenic 
or Romanic lineage, of Gothic or of Celtic, as signally 
and impressively as anywhere else. It is, in fact, 
everywhere apparent in history, as one traces the 
glistening metallic threads in an ancient tapestry, 
which impart to it of their strength as well as of their 
sheen, and, while adding to its luster, preserve it from 
being torn apart. One cannot hnagine Eameses a 
Puritan: the haughty Egyptian, who knew not 
Joseph, who made the life of the Hebrews the cement 
of his walls, and whom the charming Miss Edwards 
pursues with her delightful persistency of scorn for his 
sins against the monuments. Yet to one who has any 
faith whatever in physiognomical indications, it is 
startling to see how his kingly face, reappearing from 

445 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

the mummy-folds of three thousand years, seems to 
prophesy the face, set and stern, with a deep trace of 
sadness in it, of the hardest-thinking New England 
farmer, looking out from his windy hillside on the 
solemn problems of life and of the world. 

But Aristides was unmistakably a Puritan, whom 
Plato eulogized as having righteously fulfilled his 
trust : unsurpassed in justice, ostracized on account of 
it ; holding high office, commanding armies skilfully 
and bravely, not leaving enough of worldly wealth to 
pay for his funeral. The magnificent statue in the 
Museum at Naples, supposed to be of him, remains in 
my thought, and I doubt not in the thought of many 
others present, as one of the grandest embodiments 
ever made, in yielding and responsive stone, of high 
intellectual dignity and power, with a moral elevation 
unsurpassed among men. Pericles was distinctly not 
a Puritan, though a far-sighted statesman and an elo- 
quent orator ; fortifying Athens, giving magnificent 
impulse to art, and setting the shining diadem of the 
Parthenon on the brow of the queenliest city of 
time. 

Epictetus was a Puritan : the freed slave who felt 
himself in relationship with God and with the uni- 
verse ; to whom palaces and emperors were a trivial 
pageant; who was consciously here on a divine 
errand; who felt the touch of the Over-soul upon 
him; whose maxim was to "suffer and abstain." 
Cicero was not, in spite of his high and attractive 
speculation, his elaborate eloquence, his dazzling ac- 
complishments, perhaps never surpassed among men. 

In his theory of life, Marcus Aurelius had strong 
Puritanical tendencies, as had all the nobler and wiser 

446 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

stoics — Seneca himself, in his ethical writings. The 
Epicureans were always at the opposite extreme. 

How often the same temper has appeared in the 
Church, from the first age to the present, I need not 
remind you. 

Basil was an illustrious Puritan, though of sensitive 
genius and an admirable culture : who enjoined the 
three peremptory vows of poverty, chastity and obe- 
dience ; who feared not the imperial forfeiture of his 
property, because he had none, nor any banishment to 
inhospitable regions, since he was everywhere the guest 
of God; and who said, in practical effect, when the 
brutal deputy in Cappadocia threatened to cut out his 
liver if he did not obey an offensive order : " Thanks ! 
You will do me a favor. Where it is, it has bothered 
me ever since I can remember." 1 There is the essen- 
tial Puritan temper, which it is no more easy to break 
down by assault than to burn the iEgean, or to upset 
the Apennines. 

Athanasius was a Puritan : ruling councils in the 
interest of what to him was divine, not with 

The imperial stature, the colossal stride 

of mere titular kings, but with the subtler and might- 
ier force of a moral energy which almost none could 
withstand, and to whom the imperial tyranny which 
drove the Church from Alexandria was, as he said, 
"a little cloud, that will soon pass." Augustine was 
another, writing quietly that "City of God," which 
has been a favorite in all generations of Puritan fami- 
lies, amid what seemed the imminent crash of a fall- 
ing world. 

1 Vita S. Basilii, chap. xxxi. v. ep. Greg. Naz. 

447 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

Hildebrand was a Puritan (Gregory YII), strange 
as it seems : who strove with all the prodigious 
strength of genius, devotion and unconquerable will, 
to purify the Church according to his conception of 
purity ; and who could honestly say, when he died at 
Salerno, " I have loved righteousness and hated iniq- 
uity : therefore now I die in exile." Anselm was a 
Puritan : Archbishop of Canterbury, father of scholas- 
tic theology, who would rather be a brother in the 
cloister than a prelate in the Church and an officer of 
the realm ; whose friends were frightened by the ascetic 
severities of his life ; and who was accustomed to say, 
in the temper of the most unrelenting of New Eng- 
land divines, that if he saw sin on one side and hell on 
the other, he would jump into the latter to escape the 
former ! 1 

Bernard was a Puritan : who lashed the /luxury of 
convents, and the glittering pomp and pride of 
churches, with an unsparing hand ; who admonished 
kings and pontiffs to think of themselves as stripped 
and unclean before the coming judgment of God ; 
who was an absolute iconoclast toward pictures and 
ornaments, with the jeweled candelabra which towered 
in churches ; and who valued the soul of the poorest 
peasant above all wealth of royal treasures. 

Wycliffe, Savonarola, Huss, Zwingli — Puritan traits 
are apparent in all ; in the Huguenots of La Rochelle 
and among the Cevennes ; in the Hollanders, pursuing 

1 " Conscientia mea teste non mentior, quia saepe ilium sub verita- 
tis testimonio profitentem audivinius, quoniam si hinc peccati hor- 
rorem, hinc inferni dolorem corporaliter cerneret, et necessario uni 
eoruin immergi deberet ; prius internum, quam peccatum, appeteret. ' ' 
— Eadmer: De Vita S. Anselmi, lib. ii, 16, D. 

. 448 



the puritan spirit 

with equal and incomparable faith and wrath their 
heroic battle of eighty years, for the land which they 
had redeemed from the sea, against Spain and Eome, 
and the fierce Inquisition. 

It was the same spirit, and no other, among our 
fathers in England, which led them to endure perse- 
cution there, and many of them to cross to this con- 
tinent of unsubdued forests and unexplored wastes, to 
plant the small colonies which should be the founda- 
tion of great Commonwealths, with what they deemed 
truth and righteousness for their rule. The true place 
of the founders of New England in the history of the 
world is given them by the fact that this spirit was in 
them. We value them for what they did. We should 
honor them more for what they were. There were 
hypocrites among them. The common temper was 
not, of course, equally or fully exhibited by all. 
They made many mistakes. They were often, no 
doubt, harsh and unlovely. It is easier, perhaps, to 
honor some of them now than it would have been to 
live with them then. But the essential and powerful 
temper which had been in Moses and in the prophets, 
in Paul and in Stephen, in illustrious Stoics and in 
great builders and reformers of the Church, was also 
in them. Because of it, they take their place among 
the morally illustrious of the world. They stand un- 
abashed, and in spirit undimmed, in the most illustri- 
ous succession of time. Because of it, till the con- 
tinent disappears, their fame cannot fail from the 
records of men. Because of it, their holy and happy 
renown will be immortal on high ! Woe be to us, 
Ladies and Gentlemen, if ever we fail to remember 
them with honor, or to contemplate their part in the 

CG 449 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

history of mankind with admiration and a triumphing 
praise. 

A monument has been raised to them at Plymouth, 
on a spot near which they landed. It is wholly fitting 
that another be raised, as is now, I learn, proposed, on 
the site of their departure from the old world to the 
new. The two should stand as answering towers — 
Martello towers, commemorating hearts that were as 
resonant, iron, and words that were hammers; be- 
tween which the unfailing wires of reverent remem- 
brance shall bind not Delft and Plymouth alone, but 
all the hearts fearless of man, and steadfast for right- 
eousness, in both the continents. 

This was the Puritan temper in New England in the 
earlier time. And, really, the secret of their strenuous 
struggle with Baptists and Quakers was in the fact 
that in these they encountered the same spirit which 
was in themselves, under special and differing forms 
of faith ; so that it was fire fighting fire, an almost 
irresistible force striking an almost immovable ob- 
stacle. It was the crossing of blades of Toledo, 
with different etchings and embossings on hilt and 
scabbard, but neither inferior to the other in the 
temper of the steel, or in the sharpness of edge and 
point. No wonder that sparks flew like flashes out of 
surcharged opposing clouds, and that the ringing clash 
of those unsurpassed weapons still echoes in history. 

The same indomitable Puritan spirit survived the 
early colonial times, always seeking not to decorate 
life or to ornament society, but to assert personal free- 
dom under God, and to innovate for righteousness, 
leading the march toward better ages. It sought 
always to lay foundations, to build vast walls, and 

450 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

then was ready to leave it to others to tone and color 
them, and set the pictured glass in the windows. 

Samuel Adams was a Puritan, if ever there was one : 
son of a deacon in the Old South Church ; carefully 
trained in his father's ways ; of whom Hutchinson 
said that, though he was poor, such was his inflexible 
disposition that no office could bribe him ; whom Gage 
excepted by name from his offer of pardon to penitent 
rebels ; who raised and ruled the eager democracy of 
the town and the state, and to whom Washington was 
no more than another, if he did not succeed. 

Colonel Abraham Davenport was a Puritan : who 
sat in the governor's council at Hartford on the ex- 
traordinary dark day, May 19, 1780, when chickens 
went to roost in the morning, and cattle came lowing 
from the fields, when a pall of darkness swept through 
the sky as if the sun had been suddenly extinguished, 
and when the Day of Judgment was tremblingly 
thought to be at hand. The House of Eepresentatives 
had already adjourned, and it was proposed to adjourn 
the council. " The Day of Judgment is at hand," said 
the Colonel, " or it is not. If not, there is no occasion 
for adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing 
my duty. Bring in the candles." 

Samuel Hopkins was a Puritan : who wrought with 
the utmost energy and patience of his acute and labo- 
rious mind to vindicate the ways of God to man ; who, 
on behalf of the enslaved African, fought that enraged 
aristocracy of Newport whose splendid wealth had on 
it, to his eye, the infernal scorch of cruel oppression ; 
and who, in the midst of utmost poverty, held his 
spirit aloft in communion with God, and in an almost 
seraphic meditation. 

451 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

It is only true to the facts to say that the same spirit 
appeared afterward in those who differed widely from 
his faith, or from any accepted and articulated scheme 
of the New England fathers. The intensity of con- 
viction, of which I have spoken as characterizing Pu- 
ritanism, is an intensity of individual conviction. It 
may therefore make comparatively little, as often it 
has made, of general creeds, or of any systems to 
which others have agreed. It affirms the opinions 
held at the time by the personal mind, and is some- 
times almost ready to say, with the Quaker to his 
wife, " All the world seems queer, Sally, except thee 
and me; and thee is a little so." While devoted, 
therefore, to its own conclusions, it cannot escape the 
responsibility of leaving each following generation to 
do its own thinking, and to come to its possibly an- 
tagonizing convictions. As a system of thought, the 
Puritan element enters into alliance with diverse theo- 
ries. As a spirit, it survives strange vicissitudes of 
opinion. So it was that Unitarianism had under it its 
fair opportunity — was almost certain to appear at 
some time, and with the old temper to try to project 
the new and attractive scheme of speculation into the 
thought and life of society. Not a little of the spirit 
which had preceded him appeared in Channing, who 
had early learned to honor the Stoics, and who had 
taken from Hopkins enduring impressions ; who was 
as bold as he was gentle, cultured and suave ; and who 
faced slavery, in the Federal-Street meeting-house, and 
in Faneuil Hall, as if he believed in a personal devil, 
and that this was the incarnation of him. The same, 
too, was not unapparent in Buckminster, differing so 
widely in opinion from the father whose spirit was yet 

452 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

ever manifest in him. It is not hard to trace the same 
element in Emerson, or in Bushnell, or in Theodore 
Parker. I may not name some among the living, in 
whom equally it appears. 

Wendell Phillips was a Puritan : supple as an ath- 
lete, graceful as Apollo, gentle as a woman among his 
friends, to whom eloquence was an idiom, and the de- 
lightful grace of conversation both an ornament and a 
weapon, but from the silver bow of whose musical lips 
flew fiery shafts against whatever appeared to him 
wrong, and whose white plume shone always in the 
dangerous van of the heady fight. He had in his veins 
the blood, and in his spirit the Calvinism, of his first 
ancestor in this country, of whom it is recorded that 
having been ordained in the Church of England, and 
having served honorably in one of its parishes, he 
would not minister to the Congregational Church at 
Water town unless it would reordain him for itself, 
treating as null the Bishop's rite. 

John Brown was in some sense a Puritan, though 
certainly the sword of the Lord and of Gideon was not 
wisely wielded by him, and he might have learned 
more from the Sermon on the Mount than he did from 
the Decalogue, and from favorite prophets. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, this spirit is by no means 
dead in the land, though secular success may seem at 
times to have fettered or dissolved it ; though a 
daintier culture may have made men insensitive, if 
not positively averse, to its austere dignity and 
power; though it may almost seem whelmed and 
buried under the rush of incessant immigration, from 
lands whose manners and moral life it has not trained. 
It will surely reappear, if too daring assaults are made 

453 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

on the ancient order and faith of the ~New England 
churches, or on that system of public schools which is 
to us a great inheritance ; or if socialistic, anarchic 
theories seek to minister to passion, to subvert public 
order, and to conquer, defile and despoil the con- 
tinent. 

In it is really, as I believe, our assurance of the 
future. "Without it our civilization will rot. All 
progress in what calls itself " culture " will only make 
us tender, luxurious and inert if this be absent. All 
simply material accumulations will but make in the 
end a bigger bonfire, to be touched by the torch of 
agrarian passion. The nation, without this spirit in it, 
however plethoric in wealth, however boastful of its 
strength, however famous in the world, will become 
at last but a bald-headed Samson. It may trust in 
some ineffectual wig to replace its vanished native 
strength, but the gates of Gaza will not even tremble 
before its touch. 

But with this spirit, affirmative of the truth as God 
gives us to see it, devoted to righteousness, and to Him 
who eternally advances it in the earth, seeing the glory 
of man revealed in his relation to the immensities, and 
in his essential correspondence with righteousness, and 
looking for the ages, even here on the earth, in which 
that is to triumph, for which we are ready ourselves 
to labor, to suffer and to endure, no difficulties will be 
too great to be encountered, and no assaults or perils 
fatal. The moral life of the nation will then equal its 
physical might and its great opportunity. Its virtue 
will not fail, and the iron in its blood will not be found 
wanting. 

Here, then, is our duty plainly before us: not to 

454 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT 

eulogize this spirit, but to incorporate it, and make it 
a part of our personal life ; not to put it away from us, 
as something which specially pertained to the past, 
but to set it forth afresh in our modern conditions. 
We may present it in gentler exhibition than it found 
in the old time. We may combine with it, as we 
ought, an ampler love of grace and beauty. We may 
rise, as we ought, to higher levels of spiritual sympathy 
with differing opinions than were familiar, perhaps 
possible, to our fathers. We may be more tender 
toward doubting minds, and more eager to minister 
to those who are walking, with overshadowed and 
saddened souls, amid the mighty and mystic problems 
of life and of the universe. But we must retain the 
same spirit in ourselves, and make it, as far as our 
influence goes, generally controlling, organific in the 
nation, if we would do our work aright. For it is 
true now, as true in the midst of all the beauty and all 
the wealth with which commerce, invention and art 
surround us, as true in this city of the Puritan's pride 
and of our admiration, as it was when Paul wrote to 
the despised disciples in Ephesus, under the shadow of 
that temple of Diana to which princes were tributaries 
and whose renown was in all the world — " We wrestle 
not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, 
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of 
this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. 
Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, 
that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and 
having done all, to stand." 

We want the same temper, amid the changed world 
in which our personal lot has been cast, which has 
been in those who have stood, in all their times, 

455 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

against corruption in Church or in State, with hearts 
that no more failed, and brows that no more blanched, 
than does the granite before the rush of the storm ; 
the same temper which was in our fathers two hun- 
dred and seventy years ago, when they left whatever 
was beautiful at home, in obedience to conscience, and 
faced, without flinching, the sea and the savage ; 
when they sought not high things, and were joyfully 
ready to be stepping-stones for others, if they might 
advance the kingdom of God ; but when they gave to 
this New England a life which has moulded its rugged 
strength from that day to this, has made it a monu- 
ment surpassing all others which man can build, and a 
perpetual living seminary of character and of power 
for all the land ; — a life, please God ! which shall 
never be extinct, among the stronger souls of men, 
till the earth itself shall have vanished like a dream. 



456 



THE SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF 
NATIONAL PROGRESS 



An Oration delivered at the Celebration of the Two Hundred and 
Fiftieth Anniversary of the settlement of Southold, Long Island, 
August 27, 1890. 



THE SOUKCES AND GUARANTEES OF NA- 
TIONAL PROGRESS 



Me. Peesident, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

It is a happy and wholesome impulse which prompts 
us to look back from principal anniversaries to the 
character and the work of those from whose life our 
own has sprung, and of the fruit of whose labors we 
gratefully partake. No effects which are not morally 
beneficent can follow celebrations like that of to-day ; 
and I gladly respond to the courtesy which invites 
me — though a stranger to most of you, not a descendant 
of the settlers of Southold, only incidentally connected 
with its history through the fact that an ancestor of 
mine, a hundred and twenty -seven years ago, became 
pastor of its church, with the smaller fact that I have 
a pleasant summer-home within its old bounds — to 
take part with you in this commemoration. The 
special line of thought presenting itself to me in con- 
nection with the occasion will want, of course, the 
sparkling lights and shifting colors of local reminis- 
cence, but I hope that it may not seem unsuited to the 
day, or wholly unworthy of that kind attention on 
which I am sure that you will suffer me to rely. 

The two and a half centuries of years which have 
silently joined the past since the settlement by English- 

459 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

men of this typical American town have witnessed, as 
we know, a wide, various, in the aggregate effect an 
astonishing, change in the conditions and relations of 
peoples, especially of those peoples whose place in 
modern history is most distinguished, and with which 
our public connection has been closest. "We get, per- 
haps, our clearest impression of the length of the 
period which presents itself for review as we recall 
some particulars of the change ; and it is a fact of en- 
couraging significance that almost uniformly the lines 
of change have been in the direction of better things : 
toward the limitation of despotic authority, the wider 
extension and firmer establishment of popular freedom, 
toward a more general education, with a freer and 
more animating Christian faith ; toward improved 
mechanisms, widened commerce, the multiplication 
within each nation of the institutes and ministries of 
a benign charity, the association of nations in happier 
relations. This prevailing trend in the general move- 
ment of civilized societies can hardly be mistaken. A 
rapid glance at some prominent facts of the earlier 
time, with our general remembrance of the courses on 
which Christendom has advanced, will make it appar- 
ent. 

It is a circumstance which at once attracts an 
interested attention that in the same year in w T hich 
Pastor Youngs and his associated disciples here organ- 
ized their church, and within a fortnight of the same 
date, the memorable Long Parliament was assembled 
at Westminster, the convening of which had been 
made inevitable by darkening years of royal imposition 
and popular discontent, the public spirit and political 
ability combined in which had probably been equaled 

460 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

in no previous parliament, and which was destined, in 
the more than twelve years of its stormy life, to see 
and to assist prodigious changes in the civil and re- 
ligious system of England. It was more than eight 
years after the settlement which we celebrate that the 
scaffold at Whitehall received the stately and tragic 
figure of Charles I, and sharply cut short his am- 
bitions and his life. It was more than eighteen 
years after the Indian title had here been purchased 
when the death of the great Lord Protector opened 
the way for the return of Charles II, with his 
dissolute reign of revel and jest. It was almost half 
a century before the reign of William and Mary 
introduced the new and noble era into the kingdom 
which had staggered so long under sorrows and 
shames. . We go back to the day of Strafford and 
Laud, of Hampden and Pym, of the Star Chamber and 
the High Commission, as we think of those who reared 
the first houses upon this plain. 

The contrast of what was at the same period with 
what now is, is not less striking, in some respects it is 
more impressive, if we cross the channel and recall 
what was going on in the principal states of the Con- 
tinent. It was more than two years from the date of 
this settlement before the death of the crafty and dar- 
ing Cardinal Richelieu delivered France, amid unusual 
popular rejoicings, from his imperious and unscrupu- 
lous rule. It was nearly three years before the com- 
mencement, under the regency of Anne of Austria, of 
the long, splendid, detestable reign of Louis XIV. It 
was twelve years before the close of the war of the 
Fronde, and forty-five years before that revocation of 
the Edict of Nantes which pushed hundreds of thou- 

461 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

sands of her noblest children out of France, the cost 
of which to the kingdom, in character and power even 
more than in riches, could never be computed, the 
disastrous effects of which are evident to-day in its 
social, religious and political life. 

When the early colonists came to these distant 
plains, the Thirty Years' War was raging in Germany, 
with a fury exasperated by the unparalleled strife and 
ravage of the preceding twenty-two years. Gustavus 
Adolphus had fallen in death in the fog at Lutzen, and 
his capricious and eccentric daughter Christina, though 
formally enthroned, was a petulant girl of fourteen 
years, only held in check by the masterful intelligence 
and the dominating will of the great Chancellor 
Oxenstiern. The eighty years' war of the Nether- 
lands against Spain was not yet diplomatically ended, 
though even Spanish arrogance and prelatical fury 
could hardly hope longer for final success. Barneveldt 
had been twenty-one years in his grave ; but Grotius, 
though an exile from the country to which he had 
given loyal service and a beautiful renown, was at the 
height of his fame in Europe, and the future illustrious 
grand pensionary of Holland, John DeWitt, was an 
aspiring lad of fifteen years. Interior Germany had 
been wasted beyond precedent, almost, one might say, 
beyond belief, by the tremendous struggle through 
which it was still painfully passing on the way to the 
era of religious toleration ; the peace of Westphalia 
was only to be reached eight years later, October 24, 
1648 ; and the interval was to be measured not so 
much by years, or even by decades, as by successions 
of generations, before the vast elements of strength, 
political, military, educational, religious, which have 

462 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

since belonged, and which now belong, to the most 
commanding empire in Europe, were to come to free 
historic exhibition. Forty-three years after Southold 
was settled the Turkish armies, with barbaric ferocity 
and fatalistic fanaticism, were beleaguering Vienna, 
and the famous capital was only saved from capture 
and sack by the consummate daring and military skill 
of John Sobieski, king of the Poland which in less 
than ninety years was to be brutally dismembered. 

Prussia, which now is supreme in Germany, did not 
become a kingdom, the elector of Brandenburg was 
not strong enough to assume a crown, till more than 
sixty years after these fields and forest spaces had felt 
the thrust of the plow and rung with the stroke of 
the English ax. In the same year in which the first 
houses were raised here, Portugal was successful in 
wrenching itself from that Spanish clutch which sixty 
years before had been fastened upon it by Philip II, 
and the power of Spain, already diminished more 
than it knew by the recent insensate expulsion of the 
Moors, was further reduced through this resumption 
by Portugal of its proper autonomy. Urban VIII, 
who led the way in condemning the Jansenists, was 
the head at the time of the Roman Catholic world, 
and the fierce zeal which seventy years earlier had 
instigated and celebrated the awful massacre of St. 
Bartholomew was still a vicious prevailing force in 
Southern Europe. In the north of the Continent Peter 
the Great, with whom the modern history of Russia 
begins, was not born till after the first pastor of this 
church had fulfilled his useful ministry here of thirty- 
two years, and had been laid in his honored grave. 

Even a fragmentary outline like this, indicating a 

463 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

few prominent points in the half chaotic condition of 
Europe two and a half centuries ago, will serve to re- 
mind us what astonishing changes have there occurred 
since this modest but beautiful town was started on its 
prosperous course, The swift review brings prophecy 
with it. A general progress unmistakably appears, 
amid whatever clash of ambitions or whirls of change. 
Events seem hurrying, as if the history of mankind 
were drawing nearer a destined consummation. One 
cannot well resist the impression of a forecasting and 
governing purpose, which cannot be wearied, and 
which on the large scale never is baffled ; which has 
ages for its days, which makes nations its ministers, 
and the perfect fulfilment of whose august plans is to 
transform the earth into a paradise of wider extent 
than the primeval, in a lovelier beauty, through uni- 
versal righteousness and peace. 

But these changes in other lands, remarkable as they 
are, are hardly as full of animating promise as are 
those occurring in the same period in the nation which 
has sprung to sudden greatness out of distributed 
towns like this. The change has come here chiefly in 
the way of development, with rapid simultaneous 
accretions from abroad, rather than in the way of 
convulsive and fracturing organic change; but how 
amazing in the aggregate it has been ! It is hard to 
recognize the fact that at the time of the settlement 
of this village Hartford and New Haven were insig- 
nificant hamlets, including each a church and a grave- 
yard, with a few poor houses ; that only the obscure 
and winding Bay Path anticipated in New England 
that comprehensive railway system which now over- 
lays it with meshes of iron ; that only an unimportant 

464 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

huddle of houses around a small fort marked the site 
of the present magnificent commercial metropolis, one 
of the financial centers of the world ; that the Swedes 
and Finns were just beginning their short-lived colony 
on the Delaware ; and that more than forty years 
were still to elapse before the peace-loving Quakers 
were to take advantage of that royal grant to William 
Penn which was not made till 1681. Over all the now 
resounding continental expanses the Indians were lords 
paramount, where in general to-day they are scarcely 
recalled save by legend or history, as starting trains 
of ethnological inquiry or inspiring efforts of Chris- 
tian charity — sometimes, perhaps, with an evil twist 
of what was fierce or childish in them, as hideously 
caricatured in the Ku-Klux disguise, or supplying a 
title for the chief members of the Tammany society. 
The few thousands of English, Dutch and Swedish 
immigrants, then clustering lonesomely along the nar- 
row Atlantic edge, are now multiplied, as we know, 
into a vast cosmopolitan people, numbering nearly 
sixty-five millions, and increasing in an accelerating 
ratio. The imperfect and frail early alliance between 
the colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut 
and New Haven, whose brief life did not begin till 
three years after this town was settled, has been suc- 
ceeded by the immense organized union of forty-four 
powerful States, exuberant with vigor, proudly inde- 
pendent in local affairs, but for national concerns 
compacted in a unity which nothing but the splitting 
of the continent can disturb ; and the pinching poverty 
of the time to which we reverently look back has been 
followed by that extraordinary wealth which makes 
the nation one of the richest in the world, and to 

DD 465 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

which mine, meadow and sea, the factory and the 
prairie, the cotton field, the sugar field, oil wells and 
fisheries, even quarry and forest, under the skilled 
enterprise of man, are adding prodigiously all the time. 
Whatever special lines of comparison we follow, the 
same amazing contrast appears. The only institution 
for any education higher than that of the common 
school was then the recent and small one at Cam- 
bridge, to which only two years before this village 
began had come Harvard's bequest of money and 
books. What multitudes of colleges, seminaries, pro- 
fessional schools, institutes of learning and of training, 
of every grade, for both the sexes, now fill the land, I 
need not remind you. The country is almost too 
crowded with them, while every department of human 
knowledge is fairly or richly represented among them. 
A newspaper was, of course, not imagined on these 
shores when the Indian wigwams began to retreat be- 
fore the habitations of civilized man. None was 
known in England till this town had been settled 
twenty-three years. The first in America was still 
more than sixty years in the distance. Yet a small 
printing press had been brought from England to 
Cambridge, and an almanac was soon issued from it. 
In the year of the commencement of this village the 
" Bay Psalm Book " appeared, from the same press, to 
quicken with rude versification of Hebrew lyrics the 
praises of those who were laboring and enduring for 
God on these unsubdued coasts. It is never to be for- 
gotten that the early office of the press in this country 
was to give an expression, however unskilled, to the 
reverent and grateful adoration of those who felt 
themselves nearer to God because exiles from home, 

466 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

and to whom, in the midst of penury, cold, hardship, 
of wasting sickness and savage assault, He had given 
songs in the night. "The New England Primer" 
was in spirit a natural companion of this, though later 
in appearance, the date of the first edition being un- 
certain, the second following in 1691. Bunyan's " Pil- 
grim's Progress " had been reprinted earlier, in 1681. 
The poems of Anne Bradstreet had preceded this, in 
1678. Morton's "New England's Memoriall " had 
come from the same press in 1669. Books like these 
were designed of course for English readers, while a 
fervent missionary temper prompted others for the 
Indians. Eliot was not able in 1640 to address those 
near him in their own tongue, but no long time passed 
before he had mastered the Massachusetts dialect of 
the Algonquin language, and had begun to convey 
into it the entire Bible. A catechism for the Indians 
was published by him in 1654. His translation of the 
Scriptures appeared in 1661 and 1663, from the press 
to which it gave renewed consecration. An Indian 
primer followed in 1669. His translation of Baxter's 
" Call to the Unconverted," in 1664, was followed by 
others till 1689 ; and the work of the Cambridge 
press for the Indians was continued into the following 
century. 

These incunabula, or " cradle books " of New Eng- 
land, with the others, principally sermons and theo- 
logical essays, for which collectors now make inde- 
fatigable search, were not imposing in size or style, 
were commonly rude in typographical execution. 
Their relative antiquity alone commends them to 
modern attention. But there was certainly a large 
prophecy in them. 

467 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

To what practically immeasurable proportions the 
literature of the country has since expanded we all 
are aware, how many distinguished native authors 
have conspired for its enrichment, how familiarly at 
home in it are choice translations from other tongues, 
how copiously the eloquence and song of other centu- 
ries address through it attentive minds, what abun- 
dance and brilliance it adds all the time to American 
life ! Either one of several of our current magazines 
is a better exponent of the modern civilization than 
the Parthenon was of the Hellenic, or the Forum 
Eomanum of that which ruled from the Tiber ; and 
the yearly issues of these alone are counted in the 
millions. 

Of necessity, these changes, and the others which 
they suggest, have not come without vast endurance 
and endeavor, the record of which occupies volumes, 
the report of which gives distinction to the continent. 
The steady advance of a civilized population from the 
seaboard to the fertile interior ; the training of the 
ever-multiplying people to public administration, in 
local congregations, in town meetings, in provincial 
assemblies ; the repeated French and Indian wars, ex- 
hausting but educating, scarring with fire the length- 
ening frontier, but making homes always more dear ; 
the multiform movements, political, commercial, mili- 
tary, religious, ultimating in what we call the Revo- 
lution — which was, in fact, a predestined Evolution, in 
special circumstances and on a vast scale, of the 
inherent life of the people; the closing severance 
from Great Britain, and the speedy establishment of 
our Government, with its coordinate departments of 
authority, its careful limitations and its sovereign 

468 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

functions ; the following periods of political discus- 
sion, and of free and confident legislative action ; the 
ever-inflowing immigration from abroad, of those at- 
tracted by virgin fields, by the absence of oppressive 
restrictions, and by the stir of an eager and fruitful 
popular enterprise ; the introduction of more powerful 
forces and more elaborate mechanisms into diversified 
fields of labor ; the sudden transportation of a coura- 
geous and well-equipped empire over alkali plains and 
rocky crests, to the sunny and golden slopes of the 
Pacific ; the final climactic civil war, in whose bloody 
crash it seemed at times that the nation must sink, but 
from which it came with a nobler and an enduring 
power ; the crowning glory of that emancipating 
Edict which had been purchased by inestimable sacri- 
fice of treasure and of life, which exiled Slavery from 
our shores and lifted to freedom the millions of a race 
— all these events, with others which have followed, 
have marked the stages of the astonishing progress in 
which we rejoice, at which the world wonders, by the 
narrative of which human history is enriched. 

It is through these that the feeble communities of 
two and a half centuries ago have been steadily, at 
length victoriously, changed into the magnificent 
national organism which now faces mankind upon 
these shores. The process has at times seemed slow, 
has sometimes been stormy, sometimes bloody; but 
the final result is evident and secure. The little one 
has become a thousand, and the small one a strong 
nation ; the Lord hath hastened it in His time ; and 
imagination fails to prefigure what hereafter is to 
follow. "We need no sign in the sky to assure us that 
a power greater and a plan more far-reaching than 

469 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

any of man have been implied in the progress ; and it 
does not seem presumptuous to expect that consum- 
mations are still to be reached yet more delightful 
and more stupendous. 

Standing then for a little at this point, after the 
general survey which the hour has seemed irresistibly 
to prompt, the question almost imperiously meets us : 
"What are the essential sources and guarantees, under 
God, of that national progress, the desire for which is 
common to peoples ? How comes it to pass that, oc- 
casionally at least, out of weakness and obscurity 
emerges immense political strength? that scattered 
hamlets multiply and consolidate into an empire? 
that settlements as feeble to human eyes, at the be- 
ginning as wanting in promise, as ever were planted, 
come to take a place as prominent as any, so far as 
we can foresee as permanent as any, in the history of 
the world ? The question is one of vast interest and 
importance. It is apt to the occasion. It is empha- 
sized by the fact that not a few peoples, in recent as in 
earlier times, if not sinking in definite decay, have 
failed to achieve the progress which they sought. It 
meets us at a time when, in regions separated by con- 
tinents and oceans, the nascent beginnings are appear- 
ing of what it is hoped may some time or other be- 
come civilized states. It has at the same time vital 
relation to the strong hope which we entertain for the 
future security and advancing development of the 
nation to which our hearts are bound. Let us think 
of it then, in this morning hour, and rise if we may 
from the local to the general, from facts which 
we gladly recall to the vital principles which they 
imply. 

470 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

It is idle to imagine that there is any impersonal 
vitality, belonging to assemblages of persons or of 
households, out of which social progress comes as by 
unconscious evolution, the rude tribe becoming the in- 
structed and aspiring community almost as the plant 
is unfolded from the seed, the stately tree from the 
growing shoot, or the perfect form of manly strength 
or feminine grace from the infant or the embryo. A 
fancy of this sort may entertain speculative minds, 
whose theories in the air are to them more significant 
than suggestions of facts, and who are ready at a 
half -hour's • notice to reconstruct society and to fore- 
cast its progress, according to some imaginative 
scheme. But the obstinacy of facts does not yield to 
dexterity of theory ; and communities do not stand 
upon paper plans. The social instinct is of course at 
the base of civilization. But this instinct may be only 
disturbed or displaced by the effect of local proximity, 
feuds becoming intensified thereby, suspicious ani- 
mosity overruling the tendency to moral affiliation ; 
while, always, the primitive instinct for society re- 
quires many things external to itself for the promo- 
tion of general progress. If this were otherwise, 
none of the early peoples of the world, long asso- 
ciated, would be now in a state of inert barbarism, as 
they obviously are in Africa, Australia, in the islands 
of the Pacific, or in Patagonia. If this were other- 
wise, it is difficult to see why a progress commenced, 
and carried to points of considerable success, should 
be afterward fatally interrupted, as it certainly has 
been in many countries, as it was, for example, among 
the mound-builders on this continent. It is a notion 
unsupported by history, that the inherent life of a 

471 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

people, associated in vicinity of residence, or even 
allied by ties of blood, will of itself assure the final 
magnificent effect of a prosperous, strong and ad- 
vancing society. 

Nor can this be assured by any pleasantness of en- 
vironment, with rich and various physical opportu- 
nities thus set before peoples. Doubtless the natural 
circumstances of climate, soil, vicinity to the sea, the 
frequency and the breadth of rivers, the reach of 
forests or of arable lands, the proximity of mountains 
and hill-ranges, the accessible metallic and mineral re- 
sources — these have large effect on communities when 
the force which works for civilization is established 
among them. But the influence is secondary, not 
primary, of auxiliary rather than of cardinal impor- 
tance ; and regions beautiful, healthful, fertile, have 
continued for centuries the home of barbarians, while 
comparatively rugged and sterile lands have only 
braced to new vigor the will of peoples, and pushed 
their inventive and conquering force to supreme ac- 
tivity. In comparison with many others Scotland is a 
poor and unpromising country ; but the strenuous and 
disciplined energy of its sons has made it the seat of 
as noble a civilization as the pages of history have to 
show, while districts under temperate skies, with 
navigable rivers, inexhaustible riches beneath the soil, 
with fields only waiting the baptism of industry to 
make them bloom in abounding harvests, remain the 
homes of the nomad or the savage. 

We may not forget that our own country, with all 
the immeasurable natural advantages which the 
European mind has discovered and used in it, was 
possessed and used in their rude way, for ages which 

472 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

no one is able to reckon, by the cliff-dwellers, the 
mound-builders, and by the tribes which our fathers 
here met, which not only had not attained civilization, 
which have shown themselves unready to accept under 
subsequent pressure its limitations and its privilege. 
These smiling heavens beamed as brightly over them 
as over us. The waters were as near, the open fields 
were as inviting, to them as to us ; and no intervening 
commerce has brought to any part of our country one 
element of wealth, in mine or quarry, in rippling 
stream or opulent hillside, which was not as present 
to them as to us. It is something behind all natural 
environment which gives to a people the promise of 
progress. We have not found the secret of this when 
we have measured the mountains in scales, and have 
counted the hills, when the acreage of tillable land 
has been reckoned, and the push of streams against 
mill wheels has been stated in figures. The depth 
saith, It is not in me ! and the sea saith, I cannot de- 
clare it ! Neither sunshine nor dew, the fattening 
rains, nor the breath of long summer, can build feeble 
communities into great commonwealths, or crown the 
regions which they make attractive with the triumphs 
and trophies of a noble and happy human society. 

Nor can this be done by the occasional extraordinary 
force of master minds, rising above the general level, 
and giving teaching and impulse to the ruder peoples 
among whom they appear. Such minds have their 
conspicuous office, but we are prone to overestimate 
their effect, even when the suddenness of their advent 
makes them impressive. Creative spirits are excess- 
ively rare in human history. The most commanding 
sons of men, like Gautama or Confucius, are apt to be 

473 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

followed by a moral childishness among the peoples 
whom they singularly surpass, and who afterward 
look to them as ultimate models. Aside from such 
preeminent instances, the most distinguished in any 
time hardly do more than set forth existing tenden- 
cies, with a fresh, perhaps a multiplying, energy. 
They are gilded figures on a dial, marking a move- 
ment which they did not initiate. Their influence is 
usually limited, sporadic ; and the public temper which 
it affects is likely to be confirmed by it rather than 
changed. King Philip was not only an experienced 
warrior, but a passionate patriot, and in some sense a 
statesman. There have been others in the Indian 
tribes fervent of spirit, eloquent in speech, shrewd in 
plan, and discerning of needs which they could not 
supply. But the influence of such men never has 
brought, in thousands of years it would not bring, a 
true civilization. That must spring from other 
sources ; must be erected and maintained by influences 
broader, more pervasive and permanent, and more 
controlling. 

Seeing the evident insufficiency of either of the 
forces which I have named to account for the progress 
of different peoples toward the harmony, power, cul- 
ture and character which belong to an advanced so- 
ciety, men are sometimes inclined to find an element 
of fatalism in it ; or, if religious in tone, to discover a 
determining divine purpose in the development of 
states — a purpose which does not necessarily doom 
certain peoples to live in degradation, but which elects 
others to a finer and larger general progress, and as- 
signs to them historic positions for which they had 
not been self-prepared. An example of this is be- 

474 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

lieved to be presented by the Hebrew nation. More 
or less distinctly it is felt by many that the providential 
plan appearing in the Koman Empire, and framing it 
to a majestic arena for the victories of Christianity — 
the plan afterward indicated in the tremendous col- 
lisions and comminglings of barbarous tribes in Cen- 
tral and Southern Europe, out of which grew the great 
states of the Continent — the plan suggested in later 
times by the mighty advance of English and German 
speaking peoples to commercial, political, educational 
preeminence, one may fairly say to the leadership of 
the world — that all these show distant selection, on 
the part of Him who rules mankind, of communities 
to serve Him ; on which He bestows endowments and 
a training suited to His purpose, which others do not 
share. I certainly do not question, I reverently rec- 
ognize, the beneficent cosmical plans of Him who is on 
high. The indication of them is as, general in the 
Scriptures as is the sapphire tint on the waters of 
yonder bay. Their reality approves itself to highest 
thought, and moral intuition. They give the only su- 
pernal dignity to what goes on on this whirling orb, 
which arithmetic measures in miles and tons. To 
trace them is the philosophy of history. But I do not 
find that God anywhere builds a nation to greatness 
by sheer exertion of arbitrary power, any more than 
He covers rocks with wheat-sheaves, or makes rivers 
flow in unprepared courses without rills behind. He 
works by means ; and, in the development of modern 
states, by means which involve no element of miracle. 
In our time, certainly, no people is made strong by Him 
in spite of itself. He opens the opportunity, supplies 
physical conditions, gives needful faculty and the im- 

475 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

pulse to use it, and leaves communities to work out for 
themselves the vast and complex practical problem. 
Not even the Hebrew nation was made by Him the 
monotheistic herald of the Gospel, except by means 
of the patriarchal training ; of the bondage in Egypt, 
which taught civilization, but associated the alluring 
heathenism with tyrannic oppression; of the signal 
deliverance ; of long wandering in the wilderness, suc- 
ceeded by strange fruitf ulness in Canaan ; of the storm 
and stress of the time of the Judges ; of pious and li- 
centious kings, almost equally testifying to the su- 
preme value of a virtuous rule ; of internal division 
following always decay of worship ; of the exile to 
Babylon ; of the final loss of national autonomy, and 
the raising of hated defiling standards above the hal- 
lowed courts of the Temple. The divine plan, even 
here, clearly contemplated conditions and processes. 
It does so always, in the education of nations ; and 
while all that Ave have, or that any people has, is the 
gift of God, He has given it through means, which for 
the most part our unassisted human thought can ex- 
tricate and trace. 

So, again, we come back to our principal question : 
What are the conditions of that slow but unfailing 
public progress which requires generations, perhaps 
centuries, for accomplishment, but examples of which, 
with equally signal examples of the want of it, we fa- 
miliarly see ? To give a full answer, volumes would 
be needed. Some rapid suggestions of a partial reply 
will not, I hope, unreasonably detain us. 

Undoubtedly, we must start with the assumption of 
a fairly strong stock, not deficient in native vigor, at 
least not hopelessly drained of life-force by previous 

476 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

centuries of hereditary vice. God hath made of one 
blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face 
of the earth, the apostle instructs us. We may not dis- 
pute the inspired declaration. But there may be orig- 
inal differences among peoples, in respect of capacity 
and social aptitude, as there are among children of the 
same household : and certainly lust, laziness, cruelty, 
dominating an ancestry through long periods, en- 
throned and transmitted in hereditary custom, associ- 
ated with religious observance, and impressing the 
mind and spirit of generations, may work a deprava- 
tion of moral and even of physical life which shall 
make civilization in effect impossible. 

There is a fateful Nemesis in histoiw, and here it ap- 
pears. One cannot by any process build weeds into 
trees, or give to weak parasites the tough and solid 
fiber of oaks. We are to work, for peoples as for per- 
sons, with hopeful confidence in the instruments which 
have been elsewhere effective. But for some, of either 
order, the day of redemption seems to have passed. 
There are peoples which vanish, as by an evil neces- 
sity, before the incoming of new arts and nobler 
thoughts, of the fresh aspiration and larger obligation 
which belong to an advanced society ; while there are 
others which stolidly and stubbornly resist these to 
the end, being apparently no more susceptible to a 
pure and refining moral instruction than is iron slag 
to the kiss of the sunshine. Like that, they must be 
reduced, if at all, in the fierce assault of furnace heats. 
The inhabitants of some of the Pacific islands furnish 
sufficient examples of the one class. Illustrations of 
the other appear not infrequently, with sad distinct- 
ness, among the coarser savage tribes. 

477 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

The most promising stock for a rich and progress- 
ive civilization is probably always a mingled stock, 
in which different elements conspire, and the life of 
various peoples finds a common exhibition. The 
Egyptian, Assyrian, Roman annals illustrate this, as 
do those in later times of the nations which now lead 
the march of mankind. The amalgam of Corinthian 
brass, though the humbler metals of silver and copper 
were mixed in it with gold, was a composite material 
of more renowned and various use than either of the 
contributing metals. It might well have been used, 
according to the old tradition, to fashion sacred vessels 
for the temple. So a composite national stock, in 
which concurrent elements combine, from different yet 
related and assimilated tribes, is usually capable of 
largest patience and most persistent endeavor, while 
susceptible also of finest polish. 

But even such a stock does not necessarily insure 
the attainment of a noble civilization. In order to 
this supreme effect particular traits must appear, in- 
herent, constitutional, though constantly reinforced as 
they ripen into habit. One of these is, — a primary one, 
— readiness for Labor, in any needed and useful form, 
and for faithful continuance in such labor. Inhabit- 
ants of regions where nature unassisted supplies food 
and raiment, shelter from heats, with inviting oppor- 
tunities for indolent pleasure, are enfeebled and de- 
moralized by their environment. The strongest will 
grows languid and limp when not challenged to an 
educating exertion. The general mind intermits effort 
for which outward occasions do not call. The spirit 
sinks easily into contentment with a self-indulgent, 
care-free existence, vacant of impulse, and equally 

478 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

vacant of well-earned success. If the instinct which 
craves excitement continues, as doubtless it must, it 
will find its only wretched satisfaction in feasting and 
in fights. Even a nomadic pastoral people is almost 
sure to be satisfied with semi-civilized conditions, and 
to be intent chiefly on protecting and multiplying the 
milk and flesh and fleece of its flocks. The tribal 
government will be enough for it ; and moving tents, 
seeking ever " the pastures of the wilderness," will 
take the place of established homes and rising cities. 

Civilization organically begins with strenuous, pa- 
tient, purposeful labor ; and the more various and per- 
sistent this labor, the surer and larger is the progress. 
Any people which shirks it is predestined to decline. 
In leveling forests, subduing uncultured lands to 
tillage, as barbarians do not ; in building houses, and 
combining them in villages ; in bridging streams, con- 
structing public roads, finding out and clearing prac- 
ticable passes ; in making nutritive grains replace the 
wild grasses, and rearing the rude water-mill or wind- 
mill to turn maize and wheat into bread material ; in 
damming or diverting streams, and rescuing meadows 
from morasses ; after a time, in piercing the earth 
with drills of mine-shafts, and bringing fuel and wealth 
from beneath ; in forging metals, fabricating utensils, 
supplying more abundantly the general equipment and 
furniture of life ; in all these ways, and in others re- 
lated, the labor which is a vital condition of public 
progress challenges peoples, while other larger works 
will follow: to facilitate interchange of products, 
intercommunication of thought and purpose between 
separated communities ; to build villages into towns, 
and towns into statelier cities ; to conquer the wider 

479 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

water spaces, after a time the sea itself, through ves- 
sels of greater capacity and strength ; to furnish, in a 
word, the advancing society with whatever it needs 
for comfort, security, augmented wealth, expanded 
knowledge, a more satisfactory and diversified pleas- 
ure. 

Intelligence comes thus, with an ever-increasing 
sense of vigor. Hopefulness and courage are born of 
work which tasks yet rewards. It teaches economy, 
patience, forecast. The idea of property, if not thus 
suggested, is confirmed and reinforced ; and the idea 
of property, against which foolish or frantic sciolists 
passionately declaim, is a root-idea in social progress. 
Invention is stimulated, and machineries to make labor 
more easy and fruitful are devised and elaborated. 
Government tends, with sure advance, to become at 
once popular and strong, for the conservation of inter- 
ests and properties. It will not be long before the in- 
structed and stimulated mind of a people so trained 
will insist on associating beauty of form with fineness 
of contrivance, and making esthetic art an ally of in- 
dustrial. Intellectual effort, of whatever sort, is pro- 
foundly related to labor, finding inspiration in that to 
which it offers beauty and breadth. Science begins 
in the tussle with nature. Philosophy has its vital 
genesis, not in indolent day-dreams, but in the serious 
thought which accompanies work. Literature rises in 
grace and bloom from cloven rocks and the upturned 
sod. Libraries and colleges have their roots in the 
field. There is a sense, and a true one, in which the 
richest poetry of a people, alive with fine thought and 
spiritual impulse, was in its inception a Song of Labor. 
The spiritual thus follows the physical, in preordained 

480 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

sequence ; and each generation, under such conditions, 
will tend to advance on the preceding, the rugged 
roots to rise to the height and expand to the fulness 
of a noble human society. Political ideologists are not 
of much account in a young community. Effective 
popular industry is the indispensable foundation of 
real civilization. Whatever limits it — whether slavery 
which degrades it, or tyranny which despoils it of re- 
ward, or agrarian theories, which offer luxury to the 
lazy through plunder of the laborious, or the fatuous 
indolence which does not care for the goods that labor 
procures — everything of this sort makes social prog- 
ress improbable or impossible. The giant was re- 
freshed when he touched the earth. Any people 
that will grapple the stubborn soil, and make it yield 
sustenance and riches, is sure to advance. Any people 
that will not, will only add another skeleton to the 
multitudes of those strewing the caravan-tracks of 
time. " To labor is to pray " was an ancient maxim, 
within limits a true one. " Cruce etAratro" by Cross 
and Plough, was a motto of the monks who civilized 
Europe. Eeligion itself becomes a more educating 
power in communities which take hold, with resolute 
energy, on the Divine forces which make the earth 
fruitful; and the Gospel has a constant part of its 
civilizing power in the large honor which it puts upon 
labor : showing hands which held the prerogative of 
miracles using common instruments, presenting chief- 
est apostles as in more than one sense " master work- 
men." The roughest regions become kindly cradles 
for peoples who will work. The amplest continent, 
the most smiling skies, convey no promises to the 
lazy. 

EK 481 \ 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

But even such readiness for labor in placid and con- 
genial ways is not enough to build a people into virile 
and disciplined national strength. There must be, 
also, a readiness for Struggle, to defend and preserve 
what labor acquires. It has been suspected, not with- 
out reason, that the early cliff-dwellers on this conti- 
nent gave example of this need, who hollowed for 
themselves cunning houses in the rocks, and fashioned 
implements of pleasant industry from horn and bone, 
sometimes from stone, but who were apparently timor- 
ous in spirit, and whose silent disappearance is a 
puzzle of history. Certainly, no tribe with weak 
heart and drooping hands has the promise of perma- 
nent national life. While nature and man continue 
what they are, every people must at times do battle 
for existence. Wrestle, as well as work, is a condition 
of progress : wrestle against hostile physical forces ; 
the fierce severities of climate, whose effects may 
be mitigated where the causes cannot be changed ; 
against powers of pestilence in the air, the damp and 
deadly breath of swamps, or the destroying overflow 
of streams ; against whirl of storms, which only 
stanchest vessels can withstand, and solidest houses ; 
sometimes, as in Holland, against the inrush of oceans, 
which rage along the yielding coasts, and are only 
kept from drowning the land by a dauntless spirit 
putting forth the last efforts of strength and skill. 
It is in such struggle that manhood is nurtured, 
and the heroic element in a people finds keen 
incitement. The south wind soothes, and clothes 
with sweet blooms the shores which it caresses. 
But it is true now as when Kingsley wrote, 
that 

482 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

— the black Northeaster, 
Through the snowstorm hurled, 
Drives our English hearts of oak, 
Seaward, round the world : 

and any community which refuses the struggle against 
opposing elements in nature, desiring only gentle sat- 
isfactions on salubrious plains, fenced about with ram- 
parts of hills and responding at once to touch of in- 
dustry, may seem rapidly to secure an unusual 
measure of happiness and of culture, but it will in- 
evitably become morally weak, and will be likely to 
sink, fat-witted and supine, into a silent but sure 
decay. Struggle is as necessary to men as to man, in 
order to radical strength of character: and so it 
is that sterile, harsh and wind-swept regions have 
been often the homes of conspicuous valor, energy, 
achievement. 

But not against threatening physical forces, alone 
or chiefly, is such struggle to be made ; or, as in our 
early time, against craft and fierceness of man or 
beast. It must be made against all inimical social 
forces, which limit or endanger social welfare. No 
community not ready for this can reach dignity and 
power. So laws against wrong-doing, with sharp 
penalties speedily and unsparingly inflicted, are a 
necessary element in public development. They may 
be sometimes ill considered, as doubtless they were, in 
prominent instances, in the primitive New England. 
A mature system of wise legislation is no more to be 
reached at a single step than a stately temple is to be 
reared on ground from which stumps are not ex- 
tracted, or a modern steamship to be constructed and 
launched on shores which have known nothing larger 

483 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

than a yawl. But a system of law, designed to be 
just, certain to be executed, and maintained and en- 
forced with unflinching purpose by an imperative 
public will — this is a sign and a fruit of the struggle 
which every people must resolutely make against 
whatever would vitiate its life. If, with a plethoric 
ungirt lassitude before difficult moral endeavors, it 
leaves conduct to be guided by inclination and passion 
and capricious self-will, the end will be ruin, and it 
will not be remote. Endicott was utterly right in his 
conviction that great commonwealths could never be 
built on Morton's plan at Merry Mount. By peoples, 
as by persons, life has to be taken seriously, or it will 
not unfold in richest vigor ; and the seriousness of 
the public temper is expressed and reinforced not so 
much by industry or commerce as by salutary laws. 

So against oppressive governmental exactions, every 
people must be ready to struggle if it would grow to 
character and power. Rebellion is often a condition 
of life, and readiness to rebel when tyranny brutally 
limits and exacts is an element necessary to any noble 
popular development. Defiance of an established 
order, when it becomes fettering and insolent, is not 
destructive in final effect. It is often essential to 
highest progress ; and popular revolutions, even des- 
perate and bloody ones, from which history fain 
would turn its eyes, have contributed, more than 
theories of philosophers or plans of statesmen, to the 
foundation of beneficent kingdoms. So equally, of 
course, against a power from without which assails a 
people content to grow up upon its own ground, and 
to seek its welfare in unwarlike ways. A war of 
aggression is always demoralizing. A war of defense 

484 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

is as legitimate, on occasion as indispensable, as is the 
local execution of law, or the force which breaks a 
ruffian clutch on child or wife. Such were the wars 
which our fathers faced, against Indian ferocity 
pushed to the onset by civilized craft. Such was, in 
fact, the war of the Revolution ; and such was the 
terrible Civil War, which was needful to establish for 
coming centuries the indivisible unity of the nation. 
The national flag which floated then, and which floats 
to-day, over army and navy and halls of legislation, 
over the capital of the country, and over its furthest 
mining camp, was the symbol of continental welfare, 
which might conceivably be shattered and buried in 
the terrific shock of arms, but which would not with 
consent give way before the forces represented in council 
and in battle by the alien flag of the Stars and Bars. 

This was only the culminating conflict in a history 
rough with opposing policies and moral collisions. It 
may be hoped that it will be the last in which navies 
must be mustered and armies set within our realm. 
But it is as evident from our annals as from those of 
other peoples, during the recent two centuries and a 
half, that readiness for struggle when occasion de- 
mands, as well as for quiet and prosperous labor, is a 
needful condition of national progress. Until the 
millennium is here the necessity for contest against 
what threatens society hardly will cease ; and if rapa- 
cious and brutal forces, within a State or around it, are 
not to be left to be lords of its destiny, if industry is not 
to be fatally discouraged, progress arrested, character 
impoverished, society wrecked, an advancing com- 
munity must be ready in spirit for any sore struggle 
whenever the fateful hour has come. 

485 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

Something beyond even readiness for struggle must 
go to the building of permanent States out of small 
communities ; a readiness for Sacrifice, in free subor- 
dination of local or individual aims to public welfare. 
This is not that effacement of the individual on behalf 
of the State which was the demand of ancient phil- 
osophy. It does not involve that extinction of local 
aspiration and right, in favor of more general ag- 
grandizement, on which modern theory sometimes in- 
sists. The surrender which it contemplates is intelli- 
gent and free, and the temper which prompts this is 
no exceptional religious temper, nor one that demands 
special fineness of nature. It often appears among 
ruder peoples quite as distinctly as among the more 
cultured, and is perhaps most effective in the simpler 
societies. But everywhere it is needed, as an element 
of strength. It implies simply a prevalent sense of 
the principal value of general welfare, as that in 
which local or personal interests are essentially in- 
folded, which therefore it is duty and privilege to pro- 
mote, at the cost of whatever may be required. 

Where this spirit appears, the readiness for labor 
and the readiness for struggle are ethically ennobled, 
and the latter especially is kept from unfolding into 
that destructive passion for war which has blinded 
and blasted so many efforts for civilization, which is 
to-day the fiery curse of barbarous people in all parts 
of the earth. Becoming established among any peo- 
ple, this spirit, which seeks with chief enthusiasm the 
public advancement, and is ready to serve and sacrifice 
to secure that, will become, as knowledge increases 
and thought is widened, a constant power of pacifica- 
tion ; while within the State it is the force beyond 

486 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

any other which works for moral organization. A 
vital unity is its product ; completely differenced from 
the superficial combinations which are all that com- 
mercial ties can compass, or that can be secured by 
military clamps. " Public spirit " is what we properly 
call this temper, which looks first at the common- 
wealth, and then at the local or personal interest. 

Of course, the exact opposite of this often is shown, 
even in States where a large prosperity seems to have 
been reached. It is shown, for example, by ruling 
classes, whether limited to a few or embracing many, 
who are chiefly intent on confirming or enlarging 
class-privilege, and to whom the proposal seems 
offensive to suspend or discard this for the general 
welfare. It is shown, on the other hand, as distinctly, 
by the anarchist, who insists on unhindered personal 
freedom for the gratification of every impulse; to 
whom Law is not a majestic ordinance for the con- 
servation and furtherance of society, but a malicious 
contrivance of craft, against which it is noble to fight ; 
who would wreck the State to have his way. All 
lawlessness, in fact, involves the same element ; while 
the law-abiding temper is not selfish or abject, but 
large-minded and chivalric. It is the true and noble 
Loyalty, which does not imply attachment to a per- 
son, or to an officer, but fealty to Law, and which de- 
serves the place that it holds in the honor of the wise. 
It says, in effect, — this loyal temper, — that reserving 
the rights of conviction and conscience, it will yield to 
the formulated public will ; will cheerfully subordinate 
personal interest, and forego advantage, for the larger 
well-being; will serve or suffer, or, if need be, will 
die, that the' State may live, and its noblest welfare 

487 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

be secure. This is a spirit which tends always to con- 
firm yet to regulate the institutes of government ; to 
make laws' benign, that they may be worthy of ac- 
ceptance and homage. It lifts patriotism from the 
level of an impetuous sentiment to the height of a 
generous moral passion, fine in impulse, emulous of 
good works wherever they are seen. Institutes of 
learning and of charity will be sure to spring up 
under its inspiration, to be continually invigorated in 
life and enriched in resources ; while the ideas and 
policies which are felt to be essential to public progress 
will take fresh sovereignty in thoughtful minds, and 
will easily evoke the martyr temper: such as was 
shown by those who fell on English fields in defense 
of the ancient liberties of the realm, or who lingered 
uncomplaining amid the darkness and filth of dun- 
geons ; such as was shown by those who went from 
small hamlets and scattered farms to meet the British 
and Hessian troops in our revolution — only regretting, 
like Nathan Hale, that they had each but a single life 
to give for the country ; such as was shown by those 
who went lately from Sunday-school and church, and 
from beloved Christian homes, to wounds and death, 
and the long pining in rebel prisons, on behalf of 
national unity and honor — and by the women who 
sent them thither. 

In its early exhibition this temper will of course be 
crude and imperfect. Among some peoples it may 
seem wholly wanting. But it is as necessary to public 
progress as air is to life ; and wherever it exists, in 
vital germ, it holds the promise of prosperous advance. 
A people of a strong stock, ready for labor, ready for 
struggle, and capable of sacrifice, on behalf not of 

488 



ft 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

personal interests but of general advancement, will 
rise toward greatness in spite of whatever obstacles 
of nature or resistance of man. Its progress will be 
almost as certain as the motion of stars. A people 
morally incapable of this, and eager to subordinate 
public welfare to divergent personal aims, cannot be 
made great by any surroundings, or any fortunate ad- 
mixture of bloods in its primitive stock. It was 
power which made the world. It was sacrifice which 
redeemed it. And this is the diviner element by 
which its peoples must achieve their grandest progress. 
The temper which is ready to make the work of a 
lifetime a stepping-stone for others, to toil and to die 
that the nation may prosper, and that other genera- 
tions may reach a larger and lovelier well-being — this 
is the temper which honors human nature, which gives 
an almost perennial fame to the regions where it rules, 
and which shows to the world illustrious presage. 
The icy cliffs and chasms of Switzerland hardly offer 
inviting homes to those whose lives have been passed 
upon plains ; yet labor and struggle have built there 
rich cities, have made narrow valleys laugh with har- 
vests, have terraced hills for fruitful vineyards, have 
cut channels in astonishing curves through the rocky 
heart of mountains, while the temper, common to 
many, which blazed into historic exhibition in him who 
swept into welcoming bosom the many deadly spears 
at Sempach, to break a breach in the serried phalanx 
ranked behind, has made that beetling crest of Europe 
an eyrie of Liberty for five hundred years. 

Ladies and Gentlemen: I have spoken in this 
cursory and inadequate fashion of the forces required 
to give coherence, security, growth, to small com- 

489 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

munities, building colonies into states, groups of ham- 
lets into republics or empires. It is important to 
notice that all these forces — readiness for labor, for 
just and self -protective struggle, with the temper 
which prompts to personal sacrifice for commanding 
common ends — will appear most surely, in fruitful and 
abiding vigor, wherever a people, however recent or 
remote, feels itself related responsibly and usefully to 
other peoples, to the world-history, and the governing 
scheme of God's kingdom on earth; where, in other 
words, it has an apprehension of those supreme facts 
which the Bible declares, especially concerning nations, 
as divinely ordained to be cooperating forces in a sub- 
lime cosmical progress, and concerning millennial 
times to come. Where this large conception of things 
widens, exalts and reinforces the mind and spirit of a 
people, there is surer stability, with the promise of 
a progress vital and organic, not artificial. The 
popular character is ennobled. Expansion of outlook 
becomes habitual. In leading minds consecration ap- 
pears, to world effects ; and to peoples as to persons 
consecration is a prime condition of power. "Where 
such subtle and immense moral impressions are 
permanently wanting, no advantage of surroundings, 
no variety and brilliance of force in the people itself, 
suffice to fill the large place of the element which is 
missed. 

More than anything else it was the want of this 
superlative force which made the ancient kingdoms 
weak, in spite of superb endowments of nature. The 
wealth of the Egyptian valley, or of the ampler 
Assyrian plains, the stimulating suggestions of sea and 
sky and purpled hills in the fortunate states of Greece 

490 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

— these were not enough, even as connected with 
singular intellectual powers, to assure the lasting 
prosperity of States. The diviner elements needful 
for this were conspicuously wanting; and whatever 
shows only a mundane vigor wastes and crumbles in 
the shock of collisions, or under the grinding attrition 
of time. Probably the most colossal examples given 
in history of extreme popular weakness beneath glow- 
ing skies and in the midst of shining riches — a weak- 
ness surely moral in origin rather than physical — were 
offered on this hemisphere a century and more before 
this infant settlement began. Men marvel still at the 
terrifying suddenness with which the Aztec empire 
went down, or a little later that of the Incas, before 
the shock of Spanish invasion. One secret of it lies 
far in the past. It was not merely firearms and horses 
which enabled the few to conquer millions. It was 
not merely a pleasure-loving passivity of temper in the 
vast and luxurious empires assailed, which exposed 
them to the terrific crash. The native spirit in either 
empire was not despicable. It was apt for con- 
trivance, skilful in workmanship, with a patience and 
fortitude which rose at times to heroic exhibition. 
But the empires were childish ; puerile in fear before 
imagined malign divinities; cruel accordingly in re- 
ligious custom ; without general knowledge, strength 
of character, public aspiration, or disciplined purpose. 
So the treasures which they amassed became their 
ruin. Incantations were idle, sacrifices vain. Their 
pompous ceremonial was as tinder before flame, as 
tinseled paper before the stroke of steel-head lances, 
when smitten by a destroying civilized onset ; and that 
onset took part of its terrible force, indirectly and 

491 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

remotely, from the religion on which it put a lasting 
shame. Personally graceless and godless as they were, 
unsparingly condemned in the world's tribunal, the 
invaders showed an energy derived in part from the 
long dominance over their ancestors of supernal ideas. 
Their vigor had not come alone from the mixed 
Iberian blood. It had come in part from that stim- 
ulating faith of whose law and spirit they showed no 
trace, but which in centuries preceding had subdued 
and invigorated Yandal and Visigoth, and built Spain 
to a power which then its representatives, at home and 
abroad, displayed and disgraced. 

It was the same impalpable force of sovereign ideas, 
however imperfectly apprehended, which pushed into 
growing moral unity the jealous and fighting German 
tribes, and prepared them to be the great power which 
they have been in the world's civilization. Charle- 
magne had builded better than he knew, and had done 
the Saxons an inestimable service, if only for this 
world, when he hammered them relentlessly, in tre- 
mendous campaigns, into formal acceptance of these 
paramount ideas. Once accepted, and working more 
and more into the inner life of the people, subordina- 
ting yet exalting and multiplying its native strength, 
they have brought the development which now the 
world sees, and in which is one great promise of its 
future. Other tribes, of a natural vigor not inferior, 
continue in a sullen, and so far as their own resource 
is concerned a hopeless barbarism, because, in spite of 
generous gifts, and of dormant heroic elements, they 
want the uplift of supernal instruction. They are 
isolated and enfeebled by local idolatries, degrading 
fetichism. Only a breath from above can transform 

492 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

them, and turn stagnant decay into prosperous progress. 
So it is that the Bible becomes the grand civilizing 
force on the earth x that every fervent and faithful 
missionary helps forward the simple or savage peoples, 
or the partially civilized, among whom he labors, not 
toward the heavens only, but toward a nobler human 
society. So it is that the Lord's Day, carefully main- 
tained for public religious instruction and worship, 
remains a vital guarantee of the State ; and that what- 
ever discredits the Revelation, concerning God, man 
the future, the rule which nations are bound to obey, 
the providence which is over them, the ultimate ends 
which they are to serve, strikes not only at personal 
character, but at the essential well-being of Society. 
Any nation losing its reverence for that which has 
come from higher spheres through prophets and 
apostles, and by the lips and life of the Son, becomes 
suicidal in tendency and effect if not in intent. Of 
the most advanced, it is true now as it was of Israel, 
that the Law is its life. And any tribe, however ob- 
scure—hidden behind coral reefs, buried in the shades 
of African jungles— if it vitally accept the supreme 
ideas with which the Bible is eternally instinct, will 
grow in greatness of spirit and of strength. If its 
vigor has not been hopelessly wasted by previous 
centuries of lust, animalism, ferocious ignorance, it 
will come to be a nation, or an important component 
part of one, and will continue such while it retains the 
life-giving faith. Obedience to the truth which is 
opened before us in the Word of the Highest holds 
the promise of this life, as of that which is to come ; 
and moral forces, which infidels assail, and at which 
men of the world disdainfully sniff, are immortally 

493 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

supreme in the development of civilization. The first 
popular election known in Japan was held there last 
month. Feudalism has disappeared ; a constitution 
has been established ; the old theory of paternal gov- 
ernment gives place to the theory of one directly 
representative of the people; and in November the 
first parliament ever assembled in those Islands of the 
Morning is to open its sessions. The best hopes may 
be entertained for the future of the empire so long 
secluded from the civilized world, which now seeks 
eagerly to range itself abreast with advanced States. 
But these hopes, in thoughtful minds,' will not rest 
wholly or chiefly on the aptitude of the people for in- 
dustry, economy, the pursuit of information, or for 
trade, debate, and their peculiar forms of art. They 
will not rest chiefly on the lines of railway and tele- 
graph there being constructed, or on the annual im- 
ports and exports of fifty-odd millions. They will find 
a surer support in the fact that the Bible is now, and 
is always to be, a Japanese book ; that many thousands 
of its people have grouped themselves in Christian 
churches ; and that multitudes more are accessible to 
the truth which comes to men through both the 
Testaments. The Bible is a lifting force which does 
not break. A Christianized state is full of vitality, 
not subject to decay. The future of Japan is in the 
hands of those who honor God's Word, and whose joy 
it is to make it known. 

At the end, then, of this imperfect discussion, two 
things, I am sure, come distinctly to view : one, an 
interpretation of that which is past in our national 
career ; the other, a prophecy of that which is to come. 
"We cannot miss the essential secret of the extraor- 

494 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

dinary growth, which has been realized by the Ameri- 
can people since its prophetic germs appeared. The 
progress has been wonderful, but not magical. It has 
outrun precedent, and implied the guidance of a 
Providence in the heavens, but has involved no ele- 
ment of miracle. 

The settlement here, to which our thoughts to-day 
go back, fairly represented the others made at about 
the same time along our coast, with others afterward 
in the interior. Indeed, recent ones at the West, 
made in the lifetime of many among us, show gen- 
erally similar characteristics. Of a strong stock, in 
which were commingled different strains of kindred 
blood, trained to labor and self-control, with hereditary 
instincts claiming freedom as a right, and not shrink- 
ing before arbitrary force, the early inhabitants of this 
hamlet were planted on a soil offering scant promise 
to indolence, but an ample reward for faithful work. 
They were ready for labor, ready for struggle, 
accustomed to subordinate personal convenience to 
public welfare, and thoroughly possessed, through 
their fathers and by personal conviction, of the vital 
and magisterial truths which had come by the Bible. 
It was almost impossible, therefore, that their public 
life should not continue and be developed with con- 
stant energy. Their primitive property was not 
large, though for the time it was respectable. There 
is a touch of unconscious pathos in the brief inven- 
tories of their household belongings. They had few 
of our familiar instruments, fewer of our conveniences, 
none of our luxuries. They could not manufacture, 
and they could not import. Tea and coffee they 
knew nothing of ; spices and condiments, of whatever 

495 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

sort, they could not buy ; of fruits they at first had 
none at all, save the wild fruits plucked from bushes 
or vines. Corn-meal and milk provided chief nourish- 
ment ; " rye and Indian " made their bread stuff ; and 
our finer wheat flour would have seemed to them 
almost as wonderful as did the manna, the angels' 
food, to the children of Israel. Clocks, carpets, lamps, 
stoves, they did not possess. Little glass was in their 
windows ; almost less money was in their purses. 
Few books were in their homes ; no pictures ; and 
probably the only musical instrument was the pitch- 
pipe. 

Men to-day cast away on a desert island, if saving 
anything from the fittings and cargo of the wrecked 
ship, would probably start with a larger apparatus of 
the furniture of life than the founders of this village 
possessed. But civilization can be built without a 
carpeted base. The piano is not necessary, may not 
always contribute, to social harmony. Glass is a con- 
venience, but rain and snow can be excluded by 
wooden shutters, and light will pass, not wholly 
obscured, through oiled paper. Books are good, if of 
a good sort ; but large collections of them are not in- 
dispensable to the founders of States, and more of 
moral manhood can be learned from hardship and toil 
than from all the volumes on crowded shelves. Some 
way, no doubt, must be devised for measuring and 
recording time, in order to the useful regulation of 
life, in order to any intelligible sequence in general 
affairs. But this may be done, well enough for the 
purpose, by the dial or hour-glass ; and no English or 
Swiss watches were needed here when trains did not 
start on the minute, and horse races were as wholly 

496 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

in the future as were telephone wires or naphtha 
launches. 

No doubt the life had sharp privations, was in many 
respects a bleak and hard one, which the physically 
feeble could hardly sustain, from which the morally 
weak might shrink. But the men had that in them, 
the women, too, which was more important than any 
aids to a cheerful convenience. 

They had the robust strength of soul to which all 
else is merely auxiliary, which can dispense with all 
else and still perform distinguished service. Though 
their lands, unused to civilized handling, required in- 
cessant expenditures of labor, they were ready for 
these. Though surrounded by tribes easily becoming 
suspicious and hostile, and accustomed to obey every 
impulse of greed or anger, they were ready to fight 
for the lands which they had bought, and for the 
small homes which they had reared. If their life 
gave no chance for ease or luxury, was not gay and 
was not picturesque, it had its opportunities and its 
general relations. The lands and waters by which 
they were encompassed supplied a livelihood, and 
something to lay up. With the Bible open in every 
household, and schools established to teach children to 
read it, they felt themselves related to other regions, 
to other times, to great plans of Providence, and to 
future effects contemplated by these. The nearly fifty 
University men who were in Massachusetts before 
1640, the nearly one hundred who were in N~ew Eng- 
land within ten years after — most of them ministers, 
and many from Emmanuel College — may not have 
added notable reinforcement to the physical sinews 
which with ax and mattock, spade and ploughshare, 

FF 497 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

were striving to subdue the waste, but they brought 
large thoughts of God and his ways, and they made 
the religion for which they were exiles an element of 
unequaled power in the early colonial life. So the 
church was the central fact in this place; and the 
minister of religion was a principal citizen. He did 
not ask such place of leadership ; it came to him as 
naturally as buds break from their sheaths in spring. 
Men came to worship, summoned probably by conch- 
shell or horn, with matchlocks ready, which rested 
during the long service on gun-racks still affectionately 
preserved. They were guarded at their worship by 
armed sentinels, but the worship was not intermitted. 
The eternities touched time, God spoke to their souls, 
through the austere and solemn discourse. Their 
prayers were of faith, if in form not liturgic. If 
their singing was rude, their tunes few, the temper of 
praise was vocal in the dissonance ; and to ears on 
high the seraph's song may not have borne a higher 
tribute. The Lord's Day was the day of general com- 
munion with the Invisible. \ The very stilling of all 
sounds of labor or of laughter was a sermon con- 
cerning the things supreme. The meeting-house was 
at once church, fortress and town hall, in which secular 
affairs were discussed and decided, not merely as a 
matter of present convenience, but because secular 
things, as done for God's service, became also sacred, 
and the Southold hamlet had its part to do for the 
divine glory. The Mosaic law was at first its suffi- 
cient code ; and a man must be in personal covenant 
with God, and with His people, to have voice and vote 
in public affairs. 

These and other related facts are happily set forth 

498 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

in that excellent history of the town during its first 
century which has been prepared by him, for forty 
years the pastor of the church here, in whose presence 
with us we rejoice, and to whom we look for subse- 
quent volumes, continuing the narrative to our day. 
The history which he has carefully investigated and 
affectionately recited is not romantic in its incidents 
and drapery, but it infolds the strong forces which I 
have indicated, and it presents in clearest view the 
sources and guarantees which here existed, from the 
beginning, of the virile and fruitful American life. 
As science finds the oak microscopically exhibited in 
the living acorn, so here we find the vital germs and 
sure predictions of vast subsequent progress and 
power. It is this robust and resolute life, which sea 
and wilderness could not daunt, and which early pri- 
vation only trained to new vigor, which has shown it- 
self in the following career of the people whose 
beginnings we love to remember. It has subdued 
regions stretching further and further toward the sun- 
set, till they abut on the shores of the Pacific. It 
has largely assimilated the adverse elements drawn to 
our coasts with incessant attraction from foreign 
lands. It has set itself against formidable political 
problems, and has found or forced fair answers to 
them. It has uncovered mines, launched a vast ship- 
ping on lakes and rivers, supplied to the country, 
in a measure to the world, an industrial apparatus of 
unrivaled effectiveness, built cities by hundreds, towns 
by thousands, and laid down ways of travel and com- 
merce to the furthest borders which pioneers reach. 
It has made education more universal than in almost 
any other country, and lias sent the institutions and 

499 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

the influence of religion wherever the log hut has been 
raised, wherever the camp-lire shows its smoke. In a 
measure, certainly, it has kept alive the early ideal of 
a nation made by the Gospel, as Cotton Mather said 
that our towns were, and applying its principles to 
public conduct. "Without jealousy, or excessive am- 
bition, it has sought substantially such prosperity as 
could be wrought by the hard hand of labor, and de- 
fended in emergency by the mailed hand of war : and, 
therefore, in defiance of whatever obstacle, it has 
brought the nation out of poverty and through blood 
to its present place of distinction in the world, and 
has linked it in relations of amity, correspondence 
and mutual respect, with the great states of Christen- 
dom. 

As long as this life continues unwasted it will be 
ready for greater tasks, whatever they may be, which 
the future shall present. The shifting of power from 
one party to another will no more seriously check its 
operation than the shifting of tides in yonder bay de- 
files or dries the changing waters. The removal of 
leaders will no more stay the immense impersonal pop- 
ular progress than the extinction of lighthouse lamps 
arrests the t morning. Immigration from abroad, 
though coming in blocks, from lands whose training 
has been different from ours, will not retard the pub- 
lic progress, or start persistent antagonizing currents. 
It will steadily disappear in the expanding American 
advance, as ice cakes vanish in flowing streams. Even 
an increasing corruption in cities has its only real 
threat in its tendency to impregnate with a malign 
force the national life. Our future history is as secure 
as that of the past, if only that moral life remains 

500 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

which was in the founders of these commonwealths, 
when peril did not frighten or hardship discourage 
them, and when their rude daily experience took from 
the Bible a consecration and a gleam. If this shall 
continue, vitally integrating, nobly animating, peren- 
nially renewing the nation which started from their 
seminal work, no bound appears to its possible prog- 
ress. It will have the continent for its throne, the 
ages for its inheritance. But if this fails, all fails. 
Multiplying riches will not then protect, will only, in- 
deed, more fatally expose us. Democratic institutions 
will show no power of self-support. Any eloquence of 
speakers, or of the press, can only add a glitter to de- 
cay. Alienation and collision,- confusion and division, 
will follow swiftly on moral decline ; and our history 
will have to be written as that of other peoples has 
been, as signalized at times by great advance, and 
passing through periods of splendid achievement, but 
as closing at last in disaster and dishonor. 

We may confidently hope that this is not to be. I 
am certainly no pessimist. I would not be rash, but 
I cannot despond. I have profound faith in God's 
purposes for the people which He so wonderfully 
planted and trained, and which He has conducted to 
such marvelous success. I have a strong faith in the 
people itself. I do not wonder that political theorists 
stand aghast before this huge, unmanageable, demo- 
cratic nation, which defies precedent, traverses dis- 
dainfully speculative programmes, and lurches onward 
with irresistible energy in spite of whatever philo- 
sophical forecasts. But I believe, after all, in the dis- 
tributed American people. It means to be honest ; it 
is not afraid of what man can do ; and it is capable of 

501 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

surpassing enthusiasms. Pessimism may spring from 
a scholarly temper, which shrinks from rude contacts, 
and is offended by vulgar boasts, which insists on im- 
mediate accomplishment of ideals, and would have the 
Golden Age sent by express, which is therefore impa- 
tient and easily discouraged if a nation cannot be in- 
stantly turned, like a school or a parish, to better 
ways. But, practically, pessimism in this country, so 
far as I have observed, is a fashion with condescend- 
ing critics, not commonly born among us, whose resi- 
dence is too recent, their stake in the general welfare 
too slight, to allow much weight to their opinions ; or 
else it is the weak cant of a native, dudish class, de- 
spising the work which was honored by the fathers, 
shining in clubrooms rather than in warehouses or on 
the exchange, with no animating sense of the verities 
of faith, too sensitive to noise to enter a caucus, too 
dainty of touch to handle ballots, and wanting every- 
thing, from trousers to statutes, to be " very English." 
The vigorous and governing mind of the nation is not 
pessimistic, and those who with shrill and piping ac- 
cents utter prophecies of alarm have as little effect on 
its courageous confidence and hope as so many spar- 
rows on the housetops. I think, for one, that the na- 
tion is right. Party spirit, often violent, sometimes 
brutal, may start fear in the timid ; but party spirit, 
with whatever of either vulgarity or venom, is not as 
intense and not as threatening as it was in this coun- 
try a half-century ago. Political chicanery may 
frighten some, as if the foundations were out of course ; 
but it cannot work effects as disastrous as have been 
some which the nation has survived. Our rulers may 
not always be ideal men, as heroes or prophets, any 

502 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

more than are their censors, but they are fairly capa- 
ble and faithful, and whether elected by our votes or 
not, we may reasonably expect that the Republic will 
take no detriment from them. The nation is still 
morally sound, at the centers of its life : intelligent, 
reverent, law-abiding. Its rulers and policies are on 
the whole as far-sighted as they ever have been. Its 
readiness to apply the principles of ethics to social 
usage, and to law, is as keen as at any time in the cen- 
tury. Its spirit is as full of resolute courage. Its future 
is bright, I cannot but think, with stellar promise. 

But if a time shall ever come when labor ceases to 
have honor among us, with the bread earned in the 
sweat of the brow, when a passion for sudden wealth, 
no matter how gained, becomes paramount in the 
land, and luxurious surroundings stir the strongest de- 
sire in eager spirits — when high mental exercise fails 
to attract men, and general education ceases to be 
held a vital condition of public welfare — when plans 
of salutary social reform are left to amuse the leisure 
of the few, but fail to engage the popular heart or to 
stir with fresh thrills the public pulse ; if a day shall 
come when the nation is content to live for itself, and 
to leave other peoples without the help of its benign 
influence, when patriotic aspiration is lowered accord- 
ingly to the flat levels of commercial acquisition and 
party success, when men of the higher capacity and 
character cease to concern themselves with political 
duty, and leave it to professional leaders and expert 
traders in votes, when laws therefore come to be mat- 
ters of purchase, and, ceasing to represent public judg- 
ment and conscience, cease to possess moral authority ; 
if a time shall come, in other words, when self-indul- 

503 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

gence and moral inertness take the place in the coun- 
try of the earnest, faithful, strenuous spirit which built 
this hamlet, and all the others out of which the na- 
tion has grown — then we shall do dishonor to the fathers, 
and the history which began in unflinching toil and a 
superb sacrifice will close in shame. It is not at all as 
a minister of religion, but as an independent observer 
of society that I add my conviction that if such a time 
shall ever come, it will be when the Bible shall have 
lost its power for the general mind, and the day which 
hallows all the week shall have no more sacredness or 
prophecy on it for the popular thought ; when the 
supreme vision of God and his government, and of his 
designs concerning this nation, shall have failed to 
move and uplift men's souls as it did beneath the 
Puritan preaching ; and when that desire to glorify 
Him, and to hasten the coming of the kingdom of His 
Son, which in all the loneliness and the poverty of the 
fathers was to them an inspiration, shall have failed to 
instruct and ennoble their children. If this shall be, 
the physical will not survive the moral. The coal and 
copper, the silver and wheat, will not assure the na- 
tional greatness if the illustrious organific ideas shall 
have vanished from its sky. It will be the old story 
repeated : of decaying wood at . the center of the 
statue, beneath casings of ivory, plates of gold. The 
wood gives way, and the shining fragments of costly 
covers, broken in the fall, are scattered far. 

It is for us, and for each of us in his place, to do 
what we may, and all that we may, to avert an issue 
so sad and drear ! We must do it in the spirit which 
here of old set village and church in charming beauty 
amid what then were forest shades. If we do not ac- 

504 



SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 

cept all the laws of the fathers, we must, like them, 
have the armor of righteousness on the right hand and 
the left. Whether or not we worship according to 
their precise forms, we must hold as they did to the 
supreme facts which give glory to the Scriptures. 
Our fight will not be with enemies like theirs, the gray 
wolf, the painted savage, but it must be as unyielding 
as theirs against whatever of evil surrounds us. Let 
us try so to stand in our place in the world as they would 
have stood if to them had been appointed our present 
relations to the country, to mankind. Let our highest 
love, next to that for God and for the household, be 
for the nation which they baptized in tears and strug- 
gle, " with water and with blood." Let us always re- 
member that next in honor, and in importance of work, 
to those who are called to found commonwealths, are 
those to whom, in milder times, with ampler means, 
but in the same unshaken spirit, it is given to main- 
tain them ! And may the blessing of Him whom they 
saw, like one of old, an unconsuming Splendor in the 
wilderness bush, be upon us, as it was upon them, till 
the expanding prosperity of the nation which had its 
seed-field in their cabins widens and brightens into 
such consummations as even their majestic faith could 
not expect ! And unto Him, their God and ours, be 
all the praise ! 



505 



XI 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH (CHRYSOSTOM) 
THE GREAT PREACHER OF THE 
FOURTH CENTURY 

A Lecture delivered at Music Hall, Boston, March 26, 1894. 



XI 

JOHN OF ANTIOCH (CHEYSOSTOM) THE 

GKEAT PREACHER OF THE FOURTH 

CENTURY 



Ladies and Gentlemen : 

The eloquence of the pulpit has been a theme of 
large discussion, in other times and in our own ; and 
you have had such examples of this eloquence, in this 
city of Boston, for many years, and especially of late, 
that it may appear wholly superfluous to have another 
descriptively presented, from a distant century, or to 
be asked to pause at all in the rush of affairs for any 
thoughts suggested by it. Yet surely a rare and 
splendid soul must always attract us, wherever shown ; 
and the mystery of eloquence does not the less fasci- 
nate or dominate, because we ourselves have felt its 
power. It is therefore without fear, rather with as- 
surance of cordial welcome, that I come to speak to 
you of John of Antioch, whose extraordinary gifts 
and unsurpassed spirit had the pulpit for their throne, 
and whpse majestic and winning personality sheds 
luster on his age. With all the differences of manners 
and language, in spite of the intervals of space and of 
time, I cannot but feel that you will find yourselves at 
home with this commanding and illustrious preacher, 
who was also a hero and a saint. 

Let us first get distinctly before us the city and the 

509 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

circumstances in which the part of his work which gave 
him the chief part of his early fame was nobly done. 

The traveler beyond the Bosphorus, in those Oriental 
lands which were wont to come to our thought in 
childhood, on familiar and memorable pages, gilded 
and purpled, rustling with silks, redolent of perfumes, 
dazzling with splendor of armies and palaces, may not 
unfrequently feel that history must have become 
romantic in such descriptions ; that poetic illusion dis- 
placed, or at least disguised, reality ; and that such a 
city as the Antioch of old is declared to have been 
could not have existed where remains only the deso- 
late town, of a few thousand inhabitants, housed in 
rough, transient habitations, without arts or commerce, 
enterprise or hope. Yet a recent brilliant and famous 
story, perhaps more widely read in our country than 
any other of this generation, has given a not exagger- 
ated picture of Antioch as it was in the day of the 
Master, and as it largely continued to be in the centu- 
ries following ; as it was, indeed, in recent memory, 
and in still existing indications, when the Emperor 
Justinian sought to restore the marvelous beauty 
which had then been shattered by earthquakes and by 
war. Its historic glory was still recognized ; and it 
was a natural impulse of imperial ambition to repro- 
duce and prolong that. 

From a remote antiquity its site had been noticed 
as suitable for a large and opulent seat of commerce. 
Lying at the northeastern corner of the Mediterra- 
nean, in the angle which the coast of Syria, running 
northward, there makes with the coast of Asia Minor 
running westward ; only separated from the sea by a 
fruitful valley, between whose lines of stately piers 

510 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

flowed the rapid Orontes, and having behind it the 
winding passes between the ranges of Taurus and 
Lebanon, through which alone, for many leagues, the 
trade of Asia found access to the coast — it was almost 
as fortunate in situation as was Corinth, Alexandria, 
or Byzantium itself. So the foundations of a town 
were laid there by Antigonus, not far from where the 
subsequent city rose to its greatness, three centuries 
before Christ. The later Greek kings of Syria changed 
the name of the town, and in a measure transferred its 
site, but they established it as their capital, and rapidly 
developed it into a gay and brilliant city, numerous in 
population, rich in resources, echoing with industry, 
thronged with trade, and conspicuous in the world for 
its luxury and splendor. 

The camp and the court naturally followed the suc- 
cessful ventures of commerce ; by the Romans, there- 
fore, it was yet further enlarged and enriched ; till in 
the time of Augustus it was described by Strabo, as you 
may remember, as including four separate cities within 
its encompassing external wall. Cicero had in his time 
described it, in his Defense of the Rights of Archias, as 
a city celebrated and rich, abounding in men of learning 
and in liberal studies ; while in thundering against 
Verres, his majestic invective softened into music as he 
spoke of the reach and the opulence of the kingdom of 
which it was the capital, and of the surpassing grace 
and splendor of the royal gifts brought from it to the 
Tiber. Caesar built in it an aqueduct and a basilica. 
A glorious street extended across it,, four miles in 
length, paved with red granite, and shielded from the 
sun by continuous colonnades. Temples, palaces, 
arches, columns, made its aspect superb. A famous 

511 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

suburb was added to it by Agrippa, that greatest of 
builders, in the time of Augustus. Tiberius embel- 
lished it ; and even Caligula, craziest of imperial prof- 
ligates, left his monument there in an aqueduct and 
baths. Its great Circus was only second to that at 
Rome ; its palaces were even more charming and ela- 
borate. It was appropriately styled by Pliny "the 
Queen of the East." It was almost, as was often said, 
" an Oriental Rome." 

The proverbial softness, evenness and healthfulness 
of its climate drew many to it from the west, while 
from the Euphrates or the Indus came merchants with 
ivory, pearls, spices, silks, precious stones, bringing 
also their occult superstitions, and their spirit and 
habit of mingled lassitude and passion. The Jews 
were in it in great numbers ; though the Greeks 
chiefly moulded its society, and made its life brilliant 
and picturesque, while pleasure-loving and licentious 
almost beyond the example of Corinth. The races 
and the athletic games were celebrated in it at the 
public expense with a magnificence not surpassed on 
the plains of Elis, or on the great Isthmus. All orna- 
ments and appliances of the most sumptuous and ex- 
travagant epicurean life were there copiously col- 
lected ; and in the great suburb, amid the thickets of 
laurel and of cypress, was that grove of Daphne, 
" full of harmonious sounds and aromatic odors," 
which Gibbon has pictured with pleased and lingering 
luxuriance of phrase, where the most continuous and 
unlimited licentiousness was prompted and encouraged 
as an ordinance of the gods ; where genius, wealth 
and the popular religion had sadly combined to make 
the loveliest sceneries of nature, embellished with the 

512 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

finest and costliest trophies of the later Greek art, a 
shrine and temple of perpetual vice. 

Such was the city to which Paul had gone to preach 
of the Lord whom he served and adored, and in which 
those who received his message were first* called 
Christians. Such was the city of which Ignatius was 
the celebrated Bishop not long after the time of the 
apostles, and from which he went to his martyrdom at 
Kome ; and such, in large measure, it continued to be, 
after earthquake, fire, Persian pillage, and the ravages 
of famine, at the time to which I would call your at- 
tention. It was, even then, a smaller, more brilliant 
Paris of the old world, with more boundless incentives 
and facilities for voluptuous living, with Paganism 
fronting Christianity in it in at least an equal numer- 
ical strength, and with no one of all the names, phil- 
anthropies, benign institutions, the sciences, and the 
historic annals, which have given distinction to the 
city on the Seine. Its popular life was fickle, restless, 
devoid of dignity, and excessively wanton. " To live 
after the manner of Daphne," was a proverb in the 
world, representing the extreme of dissolute habit. 

It is at a terrible crisis in its history that this re- 
nowned and luxurious city comes before us this even- 
ing ; and that also must be plainly in view, that the 
unique and noble figure which I would set in its place 
may command our just attention. 

In the early spring of the year of our Lord, 387, in 
the weeks preceding Easter, there was in it a general 
panic fear, such as hardly can be known in any city in 
our time of comparative liberty and peace. Excited 
by sudden and heavy increase in the burden of im- 
perial taxation, the people had remonstrated without 

Gd 513 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

effect, and entreated relief without success, till their 
discontent had turned to anger, and their anger had 
burst, with Oriental vehemence, into a sudden and 
passionate fury. Throwing down from their pedestals 
the statues of the Emperor and the Empress, of the 
Emperor's father, and of the princes Arcadius and 
Honorius, they had broken and defiled them, and 
dragged .them wrathfully through the streets. The 
insurrection thus bursting forth on the 26th of Febru- 
ary had been speedily suppressed by the onset of 
bands of Roman archers ; but the fierce insults offered 
to the imperial family had yet, according to universal 
expectation, to be bloodily avenged. 

It was not merely the generally severe and haughty 
policy of the military empire which made the people 
expectant of this. It was, still more, the character of 
the Emperor, the great Theodosius, who was known to 
be a ruler not only capable, on occasions, of enormous 
rapidity and energy of action, but also subject to 
almost frantic outbursts of passion ; like that in 
which, only three years later, he ordered thousands, 
according to some accounts fifteen thousand, of the 
inhabitants of Thessalonica to be savagely massacred, 
without distinction of age or sex, of innocence or guilt, 
without regard even to their being residents of the 
city or only strangers passing through it, because some 
of his officers had there been killed in a popular riot. 
That city the Emperor familiarly knew. He had vis- 
ited it often, and had himself resided in it. Its streets 
and its inhabitants were as familiar to him as were 
those of Byzantium ; and the temper which in so short 
a time afterwards could doom such a city to ruthless 
and indiscriminate carnage, without the least attempt 

514 



JOHN OP AiYTIOCH 

to separate from others those concerned in the pri- 
mary offense — this might well be dreaded now by the 
inhabitants of Antiocb, as one would dread the explo- 
sion of a dynamite factory when all circumstances in- 
stantly threatened it. The Empress Flaccilla, a 
woman of sweet and noble character, whose words 
and spirit had been a restraint on the temper of her 
husband, had been dead for two years. Her statue, 
as well as his, had been overthrown and dishonored. 
The insult to her memory had pierced him to the 
quick ; and nothing promised to interpose between 
his wrath and the terrified population. 

After a period of frightful suspense, the city was 
suddenly filled with the rumor, born probably of its 
fears, that it had been decided to level it with the 
ground, and to give its inhabitants to general massacre. 
The Governor and the magistrates, as if to make up 
for their stupid inefficiency at the time of the riot, 
were seizing those whom they suspected of privity to 
it, and punishing them with a savage severity. Men 
were brought chained before the tribunal, were ex- 
amined with torture, and even children were devoted 
to execution. Some were burned, others beheaded, 
and others still thrown to wild beasts, the weeping 
parents following at a distance, powerless to help, and 
almost afraid to express their grief. Multitudes fled 
to the mountains or the wilderness ; others shut them- 
selves in their houses, as if the city had been possessed 
by barbarians, or were smitten by the plague. A dis- 
mal silence reigned in the squares which lately had 
been thronged with animated crowds. The splendid 
colonnades, stretching transversely across the town, 
which were wont to be lighted at night with many 

515 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

lanterns, making them almost as brilliant as by day, 
were often at midday empty of passengers. JSlo one 
could conjecture where or when the destroying blow 
was next to fall. 

About the middle of Lent, two imperial commis- 
sioners arrived, with a military force ; and the sen- 
tence which they had come to execute, though less 
sweeping than had been feared, was fearfully severe. 
All who had been guilty of complicity in the outrage, 
even by not interposing to prevent it, were to be rigor- 
ously punished. Antioch was degraded from the rank 
of a capital, and reduced to a village, under the juris- 
diction of Laodicea ; all theaters, baths, and places of 
amusement, were ordered to be closed ; and those who 
had been distinguished and wealthy were to. feel the 
first sharp edge of retribution, their properties to be 
confiscated, their families reduced to sudden poverty, 
their lives to be the forfeit for what to the Emperor 
was their criminal action or their criminal neglect in 
the matter of the statues. The commissioners them- 
selves were moved by the general anguish and fright, 
and by bold intercessions on behalf of the citizens, 
offered by the hermits who descended from their soli- 
tudes into the city, and consented to suspend execu- 
tion of the sentence until fresh orders could be re- 
ceived from the Emperor. But the cloud hung, heavy 
and thunderous, over the town ; and it seemed as if 
the sun himself, obscured for the time by unusual 
mists, had veiled his rays. 

At this terrifying crisis it was given to one man, a 
Presbyter in the Church at Antioch, recently or- 
dained, to admonish and direct, yet equally to sustain, 
instruct and uplift, the spirit of the city ; and to do it 

516 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

by sermons. The Bishop, Flavianus, had gone to 
Constantinople soon after the outbreak, to allay, if 
possible, at least to mitigate, the wrath of the dreaded 
Theodosius. A man already advanced in years, at a 
season of the year usually inclement, he had left his 
church, and torn himself from what appeared the 
death-bed of his only beloved sister, to traverse the 
eight hundred difficult miles between Antioch and the 
Bosphorus, on this mission of mercy; and the Pres- 
byter John, since known in the world by that descrip- 
tive name of Chrysostom, or The Golden-mouthed, 
first applied to him three centuries later, was left to 
take his place in the church in public discourse. 

He was a man now of forty or forty-two years of 
age, having been born at Antioch probably in the year 
345, or possibly two years later. He had been the 
only son of a Christian mother, Anthusa, who had 
been early widowed, and who had afterward devoted 
herself with unremitting assiduity to his culture, and 
training. She was a woman, by the testimony of all, 
of singular sweetness, strength and elevation of char- 
acter, — the woman by whom the eloquent and accom- 
plished heathen Libanius was impelled to exclaim, 
" Heavens ! what women these Christians have ! " She 
united soundness of judgment with devout feeling, 
and the utmost affectionateness with a discerning spir- 
itual insight. It would doubtless have been better for 
her celebrated son if the urgency with which she for 
a time effectually detained him from the monastic life 
had always controlled him. Having at length entered 
upon this life, probably after his mother's death, he 
carried some evil effects of it, physical if not moral, 
into his whole subsequent career. 

517 . 



OKATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

As I said, lie had been carefully trained not only in 
the Christian truth, but in all the knowledge and dis- 
cipline of the time. In common with his intimate 
friend Basil, and with many others, he had been edu- 
cated by Libanius, the friend of Julian, in philosophy 
and in eloquence. He had entered, at an early age, 
the profession of the law, and had found attractive 
opportunities in it ; and he had been fond of attending 
the theaters, not only as preeminent among the exci- 
ting amusements of the city, but as giving him oppor- 
tunity to study the method and the manner of the 
actors. Becoming converted, as we should say, at the 
age of twenty-three or twenty-five, and thereafter de- 
termined, with all the energy of his character, to the 
Christian life, and to whatever forms of Christian 
service it might open, he was baptized, and ordained 
as a reader, about the year 370. Three years later, 
having followed at home in the meantime a strictly 
ascetic life, he entered a monastery, situated among 
the heights south of Antioch, and there continued for 
four years. Some of his most famous and eloquent 
treatises were composed, probably, during this period. 
At the end of it, having become dissatisfied with even 
the sharp strictness of monastic rule, he left the com- 
munity, and went out by himself into one of the re- 
mote and solitary caves common in the region, and 
there for two years lived as an anchorite, wholly alone, 
with himself and with God. After these years, with 
health almost fatally smitten, and in the prospect of 
immediate death if he should longer continue in his 
cave, he went back to a home in the city. In the 
year 381 he was ordained deacon by Bishop Meletius ; 
and five years after, in 386, he was ordained priest by 

518 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

Bishop Flavianus, and appointed to be a frequent 
preacher at what was known as the Great Church at 
Antioch. 

In form of structure this church was as different as 
it is easy to conceive, from our modern churches of 
either the Gothic or the Romanesque order, or of any 
other familiar to us. It had been commenced by 
Constantine, and finished by Constantius ; and prob- 
ably as clear an impression of it as now can be gained 
is received by one standing in the famous church of 
St. Vitale, at Ravenna, a church erected in substan- 
tially the same style, in the time of Justinian, and 
consecrated a century and a half after the time of the 
Antioch riot. This was the church which Charle- 
magne largely copied in his famous chapel at Aix la 
Chapelle. The church at Antioch stood, as does that 
of St. Yitale, in a large court, and was octagonal in 
form, with subordinate chambers clustered around it, 
some of them sunken beneath the ground level. The 
floor was paved with polished marbles, the walls and 
columns were embellished with bronzes, mosaics, gold 
ornaments, and all the accessories of Oriental splen- 
dor ; and a lofty dome, gilded within as well as with- 
out, rose harmoniously above the whole. A special 
fact is noted in the structure of this church, for which 
no reason appears to be given, that the altar in it 
looked toward the west, not toward the east, as was 
customary. One might almost be tempted to find in 
the fact an unconscious prophecy of the vast influence 
which thence was to circulate, through its great 
preacher, over countries and continents stretching be- 
fore it along the path of the westering sun. 

Behind the altar was the Bishop's throne, with seats 

519 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

for the Presbyters extending from it in semicircular 
arrangement on either side ; the whole chancel, as we 
call it, or sanctuary, as it was known by the Latins, — 
thusiasterion by the Greeks, — being raised above the 
pavement and separated from it by rails of wood, or 
cancelli, from which our word chancel is derived. 
These were often richly wrought and woven together 
as into a solid oaken network. At some distance in 
front of the sanctuary, at one side of the church, on 
the broad pavement, but raised above it, stood the 
ambo, or reading-desk, sometimes called also the pul- 
pitum, or the tribunal, where the readers or singers 
were accustomed to stand, and before and around 
which the congregation was easily assembled. On 
parts of the pavement all might gather — Jew or Goth, 
heathen or heretic, as well as Christian catechumen 
or disciple, to hear the Scriptures, or to listen to ser- 
mons, up to the climax of the Eucharistic celebration. 
The men and the women were separated from each 
other by rails, or, as Chrysostom said, by wooden 
walls, " which were meant to supply the lack," he 
added, " of that inward wall of separation in the heart 
which should be between them ; " and galleries on the 
sides were particularly appropriated to women, while 
the men remained below. 

The preaching was usually from the steps going up 
to the sanctuary, the place of the altar ; but some- 
times, certainly in the case of Chrysostom, to be heard 
more easily, and to come into more immediate connec- 
tion with those whom he addressed, the preacher took 
his place in the ambo, and had his congregation 
grouped around him on every side. 

In this church, then, and chiefly at least from this 

520 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

place in it, it was his office to preach da}' by day, for 
successive weeks, to the half-heathen and half-Chris- 
tian crowds, terrified, disconsolate, despairing, exci- 
table, suddenly cut off from all dissolute pleasure, and 
often equally querulous and rebellious against God 
and man. As a man, a citizen, a neighbor and 
friend, a Christian teacher, he had the immense re- 
sponsibility upon him of animating, calming, instruct- 
ing, restoring their perturbed and passionate spirits ; 
and certainly no man ever met an emergency so sud- 
den and overwhelming with nobler or finer intellec- 
tual forces, with a more sure grasp on the divine 
message entrusted to him, or with a more royal and 
radiant temper in his own heart. 

He was at that time, as I have said, forty or forty- 
two years of age ; of a slight and rather diminutive 
figure, with long, thin limbs, which he himself likened 
to spiders' legs ; with deep-set eyes, surmounted by a 
forehead of remarkable height, and with pale cheeks, 
prematurely shrunken and withered. He had come 
back from his six years in the monastery and the 
cave", with debilitated body, suffering frightfully from 
what we know as chronic dyspepsia. He might have 
spoken of his general health almost as emphatically as 
the great Basil did of his liver, when the brutal Gov- 
ernor of Cappadocia threatened to cut it out if Basil 
should not obey an order. "Thanks," said Basil, 
" you will do me a favor. Where it is, it has bothered 
me ever since I can remember." But the spirit of 
Chrysostom, in spite of his exhausting ailments, was 
as sunny and strong, as frank, courageous, intense and 
decisive as in his youth, a deep and tender sympathy 
with men combining in it with an assurance as deep 

521 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

and full as ever possessed a human soul, of the real- 
ness and majesty of things divine; and all that he had, 
of energy and of grace, of every knowledge and every 
power, he put at the service of the Master and the 
Church, and of his beloved native city, in this ap- 
palling emergency. 

His sermons were premeditated, no doubt, but were 
not written, and have been preserved for us by the 
shorthand reporters, of whom that time had hardly 
fewer than our own. They were probably revised 
afterward by the preacher, and published with his 
consent and authority. In his later career, when, as 
Patriarch of Constantinople he had less leisure, amid 
the multitudinous cares of his office, to review his dis- 
courses, the notes of many of them were evidently 
written out without revision ; and the contrast is a 
striking one between the fractured parts and bits, 
which were all that reporters then could gather, and 
the finished whole which the preacher, availing him- 
self of stenographic assistance, could personally sup- 
ply. His voice is described as penetrating and melo- 
dious, sympathetic with his thought, never monoto- 
nous, but rising and falling with the swell or subsidence 
of feeling, while powerful enough to reach distant 
hearers. And so day by day he stood, or probably 
oftener sat, in the ambo, amid those who had known 
him from his boyhood, to bring his message from a 
Master unseen, to the frightened and almost paralyzed 
throngs who came for comfort and for succor. Not 
merely at this time, but afterward, to the end of his 
eleven years' ministry in Antioch, the crowds attend- 
ing on his preaching were simply without precedent. 
After the theaters had been reopened, they were often 

$23 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

practically deserted that he might be heard. People 
came to church after dinner, as he himself noticed — 
then, as now, an extraordinary thing. The crowds 
were so dense that pickpockets took advantage of 
them to pursue their vocation, and he had to warn 
people to come without ornament or purse. The dis- 
courses were frequently interrupted by applause, in 
spite of his never failing rebuke ; and no man has ever 
had the hearts of his hearers more completely in his 
hand than did this great preacher of fifteen hundred 
years ago. 

Some account of his sermons at the time of the 
sedition, however imperfect, may help us, perhaps, to 
realize his power. To quicken inquiry, facilitate 
comparison, and avoid suspicion of exaggeration or 
paraphrase, the extracts are taken almost verbally from 
the Oxford translation, easy of access, and well ac- 
credited. The first sermon was preached on March 
6th, or a week after the riot had occurred, when the 
popular terror had come to be extreme. It opens 
thus : " "What shall I say, or how shall I speak ? The 
present season is one for tears, not for words; for 
lamentation, not for discourse; for praying, not 
preaching ; — such is the magnitude of the deeds dar- 
ingly done, so incurable is the wound, so piercing the 
stroke, even beyond the power of treatment, and 
craving assistance from above. . . . Suffer me to 
lament our present state. We have been silent seven 
days, even as were the friends of Job. Suffer me to- 
day to open my mouth, and to bewail with you this 
common calamity. . . . Aforetime there was noth- 
ing happier than our city; now nothing is more 
melancholy than it has become. As bees buzzing 

523 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

around their hive, so, before, the inhabitants flitted daily 
about the forum, and all pronounced us happy in be- 
ing so numerous. But behold, that hive hath now be- 
come solitary ; for even as smoke drives away the 
bees, so hath fear dispersed our swarms. . . . 
Nothing is naturally sweeter than one's country ; but 
now it has come to pass that to us nothing is more 
bitter. All flee from the place which brought them 
forth, as if it were a place of snares. They desert it 
as if it were a dungeon ; they leap out of it as out 
of a fire. . . . Our calamity has become an 
enigma — a flight without enemies ; an expulsion of 
inhabitants without a battle ; a captivity without cap- 
tors. We have not seen the watch-fires of barbarians, 
nor beheld the face of enemies ; yet we suffer what 
those do who have so been smitten. . . . Hereto- 
fore our city has been shaken by earthquakes, but now 
the very souls of its inhabitants stagger. Before, the 
foundations of houses trembled, but now the founda- 
tions of every heart quiver, and we daily see death 
face to face. . . . There is a silence big with hor- 
ror. Loneliness is everywhere. That dear hum of 
the multitude is stifled ; and even as though we had 
gone under the earth, speechlessness hath taken pos- 
session of the town, while all men seem as stones. 
. . . For he who has been insulted hath not his 
equal in dignity upon earth. He is a monarch ; the 
summit and head of all below. On this account, then, 
let us take refuge in the King who is above. Him 
let us call to our aid. If we may not obtain the favor 
of Heaven, there is no remaining consolation for what 
hath befallen us. ... I could have wished, as 
for myself, to put an end here to my discourse. But 

524 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

remembering that it is not simply the nature of a cloud 
to intercept the forward progress of the sun's rays, 
but that, on the other hand, the cloud itself often suf- 
fers as the sun's warmth, falling constantly upon it, 
wears it away, and frequently breaks through the 
midst of it, and shining forth, at once meets in 
splendor the gaze of the beholder — so this also do I 
myself hope to-day to accomplish ; and by the Word 
continually anew turning upon your minds and longer 
lingering upon them, I hope that the cloud of sadness 
will be dispersed, and that your spirits will shine 
again through the customary instruction. But afford 
me your attention. Once more, for a little, lend me 
your ears. Shake off this sadness. Let us return to 
our former custom ; and as we have been wont to 
meet here with gladness, so let us now do, casting all 
our fears upon God." 

The spirit of the man went forth on his words, and 
the effect was immediate, as is indicated a few minutes 
after by his sharp rebuke: "The Church is not a 
theater," he says, "in which we are to listen for 
amusement. With profit ought we to depart hence ; 
and some fresh and great gain should we acquire, even 
before we leave this place. . . . What need have 
I of these plaudits, these cheers, these tumultuous 
signals of approbation ? The praise I seek is that 
ye shall show forth in your works what I have said. 
Then am I enviable and happy, not when ye applaud, 
but when ye perform with readiness whatsoever ye 
have heard from me." 

He then proceeds to discourse upon the folly of 
largely striving and planning to become rich in this 
world's goods. " A covetous man is one thing," he 

525 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

says ; " a rich man is quite another. A covetous man 
is never rich. He is in want of many things, and 
while he needs so many things he cannot be rich. A 
covetous man is a keeper, not a master, of wealth ; its 
slave, not its lord. He would sooner give one a portion 
of his flesh than of his hidden gold. As though he 
were ordered and constrained by some One to touch 
nothing of these concealed treasures, with all dili- 
gence he watches and keeps them, abstaining from his 
own as if it were another's. Yet indeed they are 
not his own ; for what he can neither determine to 
bestow upon others, nor yet to distribute to the 
needy, though in consequence he encounter infinite 
punishment, how can he possibly count that his own ? 
. . . Abraham was rich, but he was not covetous. 
He covered not his roof with gold, but fixing his tent 
near the oak, he was content with the shelter of its 
boughs. Yet so illustrious was his lodging that 
angels were not ashamed to tarry with him, for they 
sought not splendor of abode, but virtue of soul. 
This man let us imitate, my beloved. His lodging 
was rudely prepared, but it was more distinguished 
than kingly saloons. No king has entertained angels ; 
but he, dwelling under an oak, and having only briefly 
pitched his tent there, was thought worthy of that 
honor; not receiving the honor on account of the 
meanness of his abode, but enjoying the benefit on 
account of the magnificence of his soul, and the riches 
which were therein laid up. Let us, too, adorn not 
our houses, but our souls before our houses. What 
doth thy house profit thee, O man ? Wilt thou take it 
with thee when thou departest ? But thy soul, when 
thou departest, thou shalt surely carry with thee. 

526 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

Behold this great danger which has now overtaken us. 
Let your houses now stand by you ! Let them deliver 
you from this threatening peril ! But they cannot ; 
and you yourselves are the witnesses, who are leav- 
ing them solitary and going forth into the wilder- 
ness, fearing your houses, even as ye would fear 
snares and nets. Let riches now lend you assistance. 
But it is no time for them to do this. If, then, the 
power of riches be found wanting even before the 
wrath of man, how much the rather shall this be be- 
fore the divine and inexorable tribunal. . . . Do 
you wish to build large and splendid houses ? I for- 
bid it not. But let it not be upon the earth. Build 
yourselves tabernacles in the heavens, and such that' 
ye may be able to receive others into them ; , even 
tabernacles which shall never be dissolved." 

These extracts from the first sermon after the sedi- 
tion — preached, as I said, on Saturday, March 6th — 
sufficiently indicate the practical character and the 
general scope of the preaching which followed. It is 
not necessary to present equal extracts from other 
sermons of the succeeding three weeks, one to almost 
each following day. But from the thirteenth sermon, 
preached a little more than a fortnight after, some 
passages may be taken to show the august and im- 
pressive solemnity of the teaching of him to whom the 
great function was committed in this dread crisis of 
threat and fear. This was preached a week after the 
terrifying trials before the two imperial commission- 
ers. The trials, after the second day, had themselves 
been suspended, through the intreaties of the people 
and the bold remonstrance of the hermits, until the 
Emperor should be heard from further. The preacher 

527 



Orations and addresses 

presents the most vivid account which language could 
convey, of the horrors of the scene of that first inqui- 
sition : terror besetting men on every side ; inhabit- 
ants fleeing to the stony deserts and solitary ravines ; 
only two or three to be seen in the forum, and these 
walking like animated corpses ; a multitude around 
the doors of the tribunal, all looking on each other in 
profoundest silence ; the preacher himself, with those 
beside him, mutely stretching out their hands unto 
God, beseeching Him to soften the hearts of the 
judges ; — within the court, scenes yet more awful ; 
armed soldiers keeping the guard ; at the vestibule, a 
mother and a sister of one of the accused, veiling their 
faces, prostrate and writhing upon the pavement, 
meanly clad, without attendant, in the midst of sol- 
diers, dragging themselves along upon the ground, 
hearing the strokes of the scourges within, and endur- 
ing at every stroke sharper pains than those on whom 
the lash was falling. "Within," he says, "one saw 
tortures; without, tortures. Those the executioners 
were tormenting ; these women, the irresistible domi- 
nation of nature. . . . While I beheld this, how 
matrons and virgins, accustomed only to retired apart- 
ments, were now made a common spectacle to all ; 
how those accustomed to softest couches had now the 
pavement for their bed ; how those who had enjoyed 
the constant attendance of servants and eunuchs, with 
all the outward array of distinction, now threw them- 
selves prostrate at every one's feet, beseeching any 
help that he could give, hoping that thus there might 
be produced a kind of general contribution of mercy — 
I exclaimed, in the words of Solomon, ' Vanity of 
vanities, all is vanity ! ' I saw, too, another oracular 

528 



JOHN OP ANTIOCH 

word here fulfilled : ' All the glory of man is as the 
flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower 
thereof falleth away.' And these things, thus behold- 
ing, I cast in my mind that dread Tribunal which is 
yet to come ; and I said, in myself, ' If now, when 
men are the judges, neither mother nor sister nor fa- 
ther, nor any other, though guiltless of the perpetrated 
deed, can avail to rescue the criminal — who will stand 
by us when we are judged at the tremendous tribunal 
of Christ ; who will dare there to raise his voice ? 
Who will be able to deliver those who shall then be 
led away to unspeakable punishment ? . . . There- 
fore, I supplicate and beseech you to put your own 
hands to the work of Christian piety, and when ye 
depart hence, to show the same earnest regard for 
your safety which I have shown for your amendment. 
Oh, that it were possible that I could perform good 
works as your substitute, and that you could reap the 
reward of such works ! Then I would not so agitate 
and disturb you. But how can I do this ? The thing 
is impossible ; for to every man will he render accord- 
ing to his works. . . . Since then, by the rule of 
our own works we shall be punished or we shall be 
saved, let us endeavor, I beseech you, in conjunction 
with all other precepts, to fulfil this one ; that finally 
departing this life with a good hope, we may obtain 
those blessings which are promised by the grace and 
loving-kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, through 
whom and with whom, to the Father, with the Holy 
Ghost,, be glory both now and ever, world without 
end. Amen." 

Several other sermons followed this one, not, per- 
haps, in such rapid succession as those which had pre- 

HH 529 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

ceded, but with occasional intervals of two or three 
days, until, in April, came Easter Sunday, when Fla- 
vian had returned with the announcement of pardon 
from the Emperor, and when the preacher opened all 
the stops of triumphant gratitude and of jubilant 
praise, in the more than organ-like melody and mag- 
nificence of his consummating discourse. He de- 
scribes God's care of Flavian. " He chose," he says, 
" for the safety of the city, to spend this festival in a 
foreign place, afar from his people ; but God brought 
him back to us before the Paschal feast arrived. He 
feared not the inclement season ; and lo, there was a 
very summer during the whole period of his journey- 
ing ! He took not his age into account ; and the 
journey was accomplished with as much ease as if he 
had still been young and sprightly. He thought not 
of his sister's decease, neither was restrained by his 
tender affections ; and when he returned he found her 
still among the living." He describes with graphic 
eloquence the interview of Flavian with Theodosius — 
the first attitude of the Bishop, in speechless and tear- 
ful deprecation ; the address of the Emperor to him, 
with his affectionate but admonitory reply ; the final 
yielding of Theodosius, in consequence of this reply, 
to his own better nature, and to the words and ex- 
ample of Christ ; and then he adds : " "What therefore 
ye then did (that is, when the news was first received) 
in crowning the forum with garlands, in lighting the 
lamps, in spreading the couches with green boughs 
before the shops, and in keeping festival as if the city 
had just been born, this do ye, in another manner, 
through all coming time ; being crowned, not with 
flowers, but with virtues ; lighting up throughout your 

530 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

entire souls that true luster which comes from good 
works ; rejoicing with inward spiritual gladness. And 
let us not fail to give God thanks, continually, for all 
these things; not only that he hath freed us from 
calamities, but even that he permitted such calamities 
to come ; and let us acknowledge his infinite good- 
ness, so that all those who shall be hereafter, even to 
the final consummation of things, learning this act of 
God's loving-kindness toward our city, may call us 
blessed in having enjoyed such a favor ; may marvel 
at our sovereign, who hath thus raised up the fallen 
city; and may themselves be profited, being stimu- 
lated to piety by these events. Let us learn this from 
the divine Scriptures, as well as from the recent 
events, that God overrules all things for that which is 
needful for us, with His own loving-kindness ; which 
God grant that we, continually enjoying, may obtain, 
moreover, the kingdom of heaven in Jesus Christ our 
Lord, to whom be glory and dominion, forever and 
ever. Amen." 

Some general impression of the tenor and spirit, as 
well as of the apt and brilliant intellectual power, of 
these memorable discourses may possibly be gathered 
from even an account of them so rapid and fragmen- 
tary as this has been. But only a careful study of 
them can show the admirable grace and vigor of many 
passages, the elegant and felicitous strength, with 
which the things presented in them are commonly put. 

A few examples may illustrate what I mean. In 
the second homily, for example, he is cautioning his 
hearers not to feel disgraced because they are insulted. 
" Some man hath insulted thee," he says, " with vio- 
lent language, perhaps unfit to be repeated. If thou 

531 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

laugh at the insult, if thou art above the stroke, thou 
art not insulted ; just as, if we possessed an adaman- 
tine body, we should not be hurt even were we at- 
tacked from every side by innumerable darts ; since 
darts beget wounds, not from the hand of him who 
hurls them, but from the bodies of those who receive 
them. So, in this case, insults are made real and dis- 
honoring, not by the folly of those who offer them, 
but by the weakness of those whom they strike. If 
we know how to be truly wise, we are incapable of 
being insulted, or of suffering any serious evil. Some 
one hath offered thee injury and contumely. Hast 
thou not felt it ? Hast thou not been pained ? Then 
thou art not injured. Thou hast rather given than re- 
ceived a blow." 

Here is a passage from the fourth homily, preached 
two days after, in which he is illustrating God's care 
of his people by the case of the three children in the 
fire : " He is more desirous to quench the fire, than 
thou who art tried by it ; but He is waiting to gain 
thy soul. It is not always winter, nor always sum- 
mer ; neither are there always tempestuous waves, nor 
always a calm ; neither always night, nor always day. 
In the same way, tribulation is not perpetual, but 
there will be also repose ; only in our tribulation, let 
us still always give thanks to God. For the three 
youths were cast into the furnace, and did not even 
for this forget their piety, neither did the flames 
affright them ; but, more earnestly than men sitting in 
their chambers and suffering nothing to alarm them, 
did they, while encircled by the fire, send up to heaven 
these sacred prayers. Therefore the fire became to 
them a wall, and the flame a robe, and the furnace was 

532 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

as a fountain; and whereas it had received them 
bound, it restored them freed. It received bodies that 
were mortal, but abstained from them as if they had 
been immortal. The tyrant bound their feet, and 
their feet bound the operation of the flames. O mar- 
velous thing! The flame loosed those who were 
bound, and was itself afterward bound by those who 
had been set in it in bonds. For the piety of the 
youths changed the nature of things ; or rather, it did 
not change their nature, but what was more wonder- 
ful, it stayed their operation, even while their nature 
remained the same. . . . The tyrant bound and 
the flame let loose ! that thou mightest learn at once 
the fierceness of the barbarian and the submissiveness 
of the element." 

In another homily, a few days later, on the w r ords 
in Ecclesiastes, "Remember that thou goest in the 
midst of snares," he says : " Why, it is asked, are 
there so many snares ? That we may not fly low, but 
may seek the things which are above. For just as 
birds, so long as they cleave the upper air, are not 
easily caught, so thou also, as long as thou lookest at 
things above, wilt not easily be captured, whether by 
a snare or by any other device of evil. The devil is a 
fowler. Soar thou, then, too high for his arrows. 
The man who has mounted aloft will no longer admire 
anything in the matters of this world ; but as, when 
we have ascended the tops of the mountains, the town, 
with its walls, seems to us small, and the men appear 
going about on the earth like so many insects, so, 
when thou hast ascended to the lofty contemplations 
of wisdom, nothing upon the earth will have power to 
fascinate thee 3 but everything here, riches and honor 

533 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

and human glory, and whatsoever else may be of their 
kind, will appear insignificant as thou regardest heav- 
enly things. . . . Hence also Paul's admonition, 
'Set your affection on things above.' "What things 
callest thou things above ? I ask. Where the sun is ? 
"Where the moon is ? Nay, saith the apostle. Where 
angels are ? Where archangels ? Where the cheru- 
bim are ? Where the seraphim ? Nay, still saith he. 
But where, then ? ' Where Christ sitteth, at the right 
hand of God.'" 

In the same homily, admonishing, as he continually 
did, against the vice of profane swearing, for which 
Antioch was sadly famous, he quotes from Zechariah 
his vision of a flying sickle, as it is translated in the 
Septuagint (drepanon petomenon), and then says: 
"For what reason is it a sickle, and even a flying 
sickle, this vengeance which is shown to pursue the 
swearer ? That thou mayest see that the judgment is 
inevitable, and that the punishment is not to be 
eluded. For from a flying sword one might perchance 
be able to escape ; but from a sickle falling upon the 
neck, and encircling it like a cord, no one can escape ; 
and when wings are added, what hope of safety can 
there be ? . . . The sword is not so piercing as is 
the nature of an oath ; the saber is not so destructive 
as is the stroke of an oath. The swearer, though he 
seems to live, is already dead, and hath received the 
fatal blow. Even as the man who hath received the 
halter, before he hath gone out of the city, and come 
to the pit, and seen the executioner standing over him, 
is dead from the time he passed the doors of the hall 
of justice : so also is the swearer." 

In another homily, preached especially to those 

534 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

flocking in from the country to hear him, it is inter- 
esting to see how he takes the peculiar sights of the 
city, and makes these his images and vivid parables. 
" Let us think," he says, " what services the devil 
imposes ; how laborious, how burdensome ; and yet the 
difficulty becomes no obstacle to those who perform 
them. For what can be more difficult, I ask, than 
when a youth, delivering himself to those who under- 
take to make his limbs supple and pliant, uses his 
utmost exertion to bend his whole body into the shape 
of a wheel, and so to revolve upon the pavement ; his 
powers being tasked, to the last measure, at the same 
instant, through the eyes, through the 'movement of 
the hands, as through the other kindred convolutions, 
in order to pass into the class of female dancers. Yet 
neither the difficulty of such feats, nor the resulting 
degradation, is even thought of. Or, again, with 
respect to those pulled over the stage, and using their 
limbs as if they were wings. Who that behold such 
but must be struck with amazement ? So those, too, 
who toss knives aloft into the air, one after the other, 
and again catch them by their handles as they fall. 
Whom of us might they not put to shame, who are 
willing to undergo no labor for the sake of virtue ? 
And what can one say of those men who balance a 
pole on the forehead, keeping it as steady as if it were 
a tree rooted to the ground ? Even this is not the 
only marvel in the matter, but they set little children 
to wrestle with one another on the top of this pole ; 
and yet, neither the hands assisting, nor any other 
part of the body, the forehead sustains the pole un- 
shaken, with more steadiness than could any fasten- 
ing. Another walks on a slender cord, with the same 

535 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

fearlessness with which men run on level plains. These 
things, which even to thought seem impracticable, be- 
come possible by art. What similar difficulty can we 
pretend to encounter in the matter of swearing? 
What is the difficulty there, what the toil, what the 
art, where the danger ? A little effort on our part 
alone is needed, and the whole task will be quickly 
accomplished." 

The address which he attributes to Flavian, before 
Theodosius, but which is unquestionably in form his 
own, if not in its substance, being full of his idioms of 
expression, illustrates in another way his marvelous 
accomplishment in the art of putting things. " We 
ourselves," he says, speaking by Flavian for the people 
of Antioch, " have by anticipation inflicted upon our- 
selves what is worse than a thousand deaths. If 
barbarians had come down upon our city, and over- 
thrown its walls, and burned its houses, and had car- 
ried us away captive, the evil would have been less. 
Wherefore is this, do you say ? Because while you 
live [that is, the Emperor] and continue your generous 
kindness toward us, there might be a hope that these 
evils would be overcome, and that we should be 
restored to our former condition, and enjoy a more 
illustrious freedom. But now, having been stripped 
of your favor, having quenched your love, which has 
been a greater security to us than all our walls, whom 
have we left to whom to fly ? While therefore the 
people seem to have committed the most intolerable 
offenses, they have suffered, on the other hand, the 
most terrible evils ; not daring to look any man in the 
face ; not being able to behold the sun with free eyes ; 
shame everywhere weighing on their eyelids, and 

536 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

compelling them to hide their heads. ... If you 
will, most gracious, most wise, most devout Sovereign, 
this very contempt which you have suffered will pro- 
cure you a crown more honorable and splendid than 
the diadem which you wear. The diadem is a trophy 
of your princely virtue, but also a token of the mag- 
nificence of him who gave it. But the crown woven 
from your humanity will be wholly your own blessed 
work ; and all men will less admire you for the sake of 
those precious stones than they will applaud you for 
your superiority to your wrath. Were your statues 
thrown down ? You have it in your power to set up 
others, more splendid. If you remit the offenses of 
those who have done you this injury, and take not 
revenge on them, they will erect a statue to you, not 
one in the forum, of brass or of gold, or inlaid with 
gems, but one arrayed in that robe which is more 
precious than anything material, of clemency and 
tender mercy. Every man will thus exalt you, 
within his own soul ; and you will have as many 
statues as there are men who inhabit, or who shall 
hereafter inhabit, the entire world." 

No doubt the excellent Flavian made an excellent 
address before the Emperor ; but that he did it in 
terms like these is nowise probable. The reader of 
the sermons of John the Presbyter will not doubt 
whence the rhetoric came in which he clothes the 
Bishop's appeal. 

Another extract may be permitted, from another 
homily, as showing the practical outlook of the 
preacher, as well as a tendency in the minds of those 
who heard him, which is not Avholly unknown in our 
day — outside, at least, of Boston. After many earnest 

537 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

admonitions, he adds : " Say these things to others, 
and observe them also yourselves. I know that in 
this place [that is, the church] we become more 
reverent, and lay aside our evil habits. But what 
is to be desired is this — that we depart taking this 
reverence away with us to where we specially need 
it. For those who carry water do not seek merely to 
have their vessels full when they are near the fountain, 
and then empty them when they reach home ; but 
they set them down there with particular care, lest 
they be overturned, and their labor become useless. 
Let us imitate this process, and when we reach home 
let us strictly retain what has here been spoken ; 
since, if ye have here gotten full, but return empty to 
your houses, having the vessels of your understanding 
there destitute of what here ye have heard, there will 
be for you no advantage from your present replenish- 
ment. Show me not the wrestler in the place of his 
exercise, but show him in the lists ; and show me re- 
ligion not at the season of hearing, but in the time of 
personal practice." 

Not in the same connection, but of the same tenor, 
from another homily, after the fears of the city had 
been relieved, come these words : " When the sad con- 
flagration of these calamities first was kindled, I said 
it was not a time for preaching, but for prayer. The 
very same thing I now repeat, when the fire has been 
quenched— that it is now especially, and more than 
ever, a time for prayer ; now the season for tears and 
compunction, for anxiety of soul, for great diligence 
and great caution. For at that time the very nature 
of our trouble restrained us, and compelled us to a 
measure of sobriety. But noWj when the scourge is 

538 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

removed, when the cloud is past, there is danger that 
we fall back into sloth, and be relaxed by the respite. 
. . . Learn what the dignity of a city is ; and then 
thou wilt see clearly that if the inhabitants thereof 
do not betray it, no one else can take away its honor. 
Dost thou wish to learn the dignity of this city ? I 
will tell it exactly ; not that thou may est know it 
merely, but that thou may est emulate it also. This it 
is : 'It came to pass that the disciples were first called 
Christians at Antioch.' Dost thou wish to hear further 
of another dignity belonging to this city ? A grievous 
famine was once approaching, and the inhabitants of 
Antioch determined, as each had the means, to send 
relief to the saints at Jerusalem. . . . They also 
sent Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem, and cautioned 
the apostles to provide that pure doctrine should be 
distributed over the world. This is the dignity of this 
city ; this its precedence. This makes it a metropolis, 
not in the earth only, but as related to the heavens. 
To me, the city that hath not pious citizens is meaner 
than any village, and more ignoble than any cave. 
. . . Let us not then be senseless ; but then let us 
grieve when any one deprives us of our dignity of soul ; 
when we commit sin ; when we have offended the 
common Master of us all. I have heard many saying 
in the Forum, ' Alas for thee, O Antioch ! What hath 
befallen thee ! ' "When I heard, I smiled at the puerile 
spirit which gave vent to such words. "When thou 
seest men dancing, drunken, singing, blaspheming, 
perjuring themselves, lying, then apply such words as 
these, 'Alas for thee, O city! What hath befallen 
thee ! ' But if thou seest the Forum containing meek, 
modest and temperate persons, even though they be 

539 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

few, then pronounce the city blessed When 

you wish to bestow an encomium on it, tell me not of 
the suburb of Daphne ; nor of the height and multi- 
tude of its cypresses ; nor of its flowing fountains of 
waters ; nor of the vast population which inhabits the 
town, nor of the safety of its markets and the abun- 
dance of its wares. But if you are able to speak of 
virtue, meekness, almsgiving, nightly visions, prayers, 
sobriety, true wisdom of soul — then for these things 
commend the city." 

His power of setting things tersely forth, in pointed 
sentences, is always remarkable. Take this contrast 
between the people of Nineveh and the people of An- 
tioch, in the fifth homily, for an example : " Thus was 
that city agitated when it heard the prophet's voice ; 
but instead of being injured, it was benefited, by 
fear, for that fear became the cause of its safety. 
The threatening effected the deliverance from peril. 
The sentence of overthrow put a stop to the overthrow. 
. . . They indeed did not flee from the city, as we 
are doing, but remaining in it, they caused it to stand. 
It was a snare, and they made it a fortress. It was a 
gulf and a precipice ; and they turned it into a tower 
of safety. They had heard that the buildings would 
fall, yet they fled not from the buildings, but from 
their sins. . . . They trusted for safety not to a 
change of habitations, but to a change of habits." Or 
take this example : " The weapons of the lion are a 
hairy mane, pointed claws and sharp teeth. The 
weapons of the righteous man are divine wisdom, tem- 
perance, patience, contempt of all present things. Who- 
soever hath these weapons shall be able to affright not 
only wicked men, but the adverse powers themselves." 

540 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

Or, again : " It is customary with those who love, 
to glory more in the things which they suffer for those 
who are beloved than in the benefits which they re- 
ceive from them. A king is not so pleased with his 
diadem as Paul was, glorying in his chains. A dia- 
dem offers only an ornament to the crowned head, but 
the chain is a greater ornament, while at the same 
time a security. A king's crown often betrays the 
head which it encircles, and allures innumerable 
traitors, inviting them to the lust of empire ; but the 
chain will bring nothing of the sort upon those who 
bear it, but altogether the contrary. . . . But 
what were the chains, some one says, that brought 
glory to him thus fettered ? Were they not formed 
of iron ? Of iron, indeed, they were fashioned ; but 
they showed the graces of the spirit^ flowering upon 
them richly, since he wore them for Christ's sake 
. . . ; and thus that iron became to him more pre- 
cious than any gold, not by its intrinsic nature, but for 
this cause and ground." 

A maxim for usefulness has not unfrequently been 
derived from the bee, but hardly ever more charm- 
ingly than by this preacher : " Whilst from the ant 
thou learnest industry, take from the bee a lesson at 
once of neatness, industry and mutual concord. For 
it is not more for herself than for us that the bee 
labors and is every day weary ; which is a thing espe- 
cially proper for a Christian, — not to seek his own 
things only, but the things of others. As, then, she 
traverses the meadows, that she may provide a ban- 
quet for another, so also do thou, O man. If thou 
hast accumulated wealth, expend it upon others. If 
thou hast the faculty of teaching, bury not the talent, 

541 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

but bring it forth publicly for those who need it. If 
thou hast any other special endowment, become useful 
by it to those who need the fruit of thy labor. Seest 
thou not that for this very reason the bee is more hon- 
ored than other insects — not because she labors' 
merely, but because she labors for others ? For the 
spider also labors, and spreads his fine textures upon 
the walls, surpassing the utmost skill of women ; but 
he is still without estimation, since his work is in no 
way profitable to us. Such are they who labor and 
are weary, but only for themselves." 

Another power must be recognized in him — that of 
taking up a whole assembly on the rush of a great 
thought, and carrying it, as on eagle's wings, to the 
highest contemplations. And of this I can give but a 
single example, one of many. He is speaking of the 
visible universe. " Seest thou its greatness ? Marvel 
at the power of Him who made it. Seest thou its 
beauty? Be astonished at the wisdom which hath 
adorned it. This it was which the prophet signified 
when he said, ' The heavens declare the glory of God.' 
How then, tell me, do they declare it ? Yoice they 
have none; mouth they possess not; no tongue is 
theirs. How then do they declare this glory? By 
the spectacle itself. For when thou seest the beauty, 
the breadth, the height, the steadfast poise, the form, 
the stability thereof, during a period so long — hear- 
ing, as it were, a voice, and being instructed by the 
spectacle, thou adorest Him who created so fair and so 
admirable a body. The heavens may be silent, but 
the appearance of them emits a voice which is louder 
than a trumpet-sound, instructing us not by the ear, 
but through the medium of the eye, since the latter is 

542 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

a sense more sure and more distinct. If God had 
given instruction by books and by letters, be who 
knew letters would have learned what was written, 
but the illiterate would have gone away without bene- 
fit, unless some one had assisted his way ; the wealthy 
would have purchased the Bible, but the poor man had 
been unable to obtain it. Again, he who knew the 
language expressed by the letters might have known 
what was therein contained, but the Scythian and the 
barbarian, the Indian and the Egyptian, and all others 
excluded from that language, would have gone away 
without instruction. This cannot be said with re- 
spect to the heavens, for every man that walks upon 
the earth shall hear their voice, since not by the ear, 
but through the sight, it reaches the understanding. 
. . . Upon this volume the unlearned as well as the 
wise shall be able to look ; the poor man and the rich 
man alike ; and wherever any may chance to come, 
looking up toward the heavens, he will receive a suffi- 
cient instruction. . . . And this is true not merely 
of the heavens, but of the successions of the day and 
the night. For when thou understandest how these 
distribute between them the whole year, and mutually 
divide the length of the entire space, as it were by a 
beam and scales, thou wilt be astonished at Him who 
hath ordained them. ... So who can describe 
the order of the seasons ; and how these, like virgins 
dancing in a circle, succeed each other with the happi- 
est harmony; how those in the middle cease not to 
pass over to those who are opposite, with a gradual 
and noiseless transition. So that neither does the 
summer receive us directly after winter, nor the winter 
immediately succeed the summer ; but midway the 

543 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

softer season is interposed, that insensibly, little by 
little, our bodies may be prepared to encounter what 
is to come, without uneasiness. . . . Who is he so 
wretched and so unfortunate that, beholding the 
heavens, and. beholding this exact temperament of the 
seasons, and the unfailing order of day and night, he 
can think that these things happen of their own ac- 
cord, instead of adoring Him who hath arranged them 
with such consummate wisdom ? " 

I have said enough, I am sure, and have quoted 
enough from these remarkable discourses, all of them 
contained in a single volume, to indicate, at least par- 
tially, the sources and the measure of the power as a 
preacher of this John of Antioch. My own impres- 
sion of it I cannot easily overstate. Dean Milman 
says of him, with his accustomed moderation of 
phrase, that he was " the model of a preacher for a 
great city." Certainly, not only his popularity, but 
the vast effects produced by his preaching at Antioch 
first, and afterward at Constantinople, sustain and en- 
force this temperate judgment. But I should say for 
myself much more than this : that he was one of the 
few, not more perhaps than half-a-dozen at most, of 
the really great preachers of the world ; and that 
among these he held nearly, if not quite, the foremost 
place. I have read many sermons of Augustine and 
Gregory, not a few of the great medieval preachers, 
from Bernard of Clairvaux to John Tauler ; a goodly 
number from Bossuet, Massillon and other famous 
preachers of France, with many of the English pulpit, 
from Taylor and South to Robert Hall, Newman, Lid- 
don and the others, with our own Phillips Brooks ; 
and I do not know, for myself, where to find certainly 

544 



JOHN OF AftTIOCH 

the superior, in this special function, of this Presbyter 
in Antioch, fifteen hundred years ago. 

Others may have been more finely exact in analysis 
of themes; I know of no one who has had his thought 
more distinctly before him, or has made it more dis- 
tinct and commanding to his hearers. Others have 
equaled, but none have surpassed him in the reach 
and ardor of that sympathy with souls which drew to 
him not only the devout, but those who were conscious 
of any need — indeed all those who were not fiercely 
predetermined against him by self-commitment to the 
courses and causes against which his speech flamed 
like a sword. His alertness of mind still amazes the 
reader, while his convictions remain as fixed and im- 
movable as the ribs of the hills. His buoyant and 
unconquerable hopefulness was an immense power, in 
himself, and for his hearers ; and it offers a lesson to 
all who follow him, however humbly, in his great 
function. In the days of debased or discordant 
churches, of scandalous prelates fighting each other, 
often to the death, for riches and honors, and all lasts 
of the flesh — when society was chaotic, seething with 
strifes, of opinions and of arms, when paganism had 
only half yielded to the Gospel, and when the turbu- 
lent peoples were only held to any semblance of order 
by the terrible secular tyranny above them — he was 
as tranquil and brave in spirit, as surely expectant of 
the better things coming, as if he had lived near the 
millennium, in lands full of culture and peace. The 
first note of weakening timidity is not found in his 
writings. Almost every personal tone is there, except 
a whine. 

In doctrine he was thoroughly evangelical, almost 

II 545 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

according to our modern conventional meaning of the 
word. He had no doubts to fight in his own mind, 
no fears concerning the truth, and no inward hesita- 
tions to fetter his speech. I cannot say, certainly, 
that I have read all or the larger part of that which 
is contained in the thirteen immense folios of my 
Yenice edition of his works ; and I sympathize some- 
what with Suidas, the lexicographer, if he said, as 
he is reported to have said, that only God can know 
all that there is in those almost immeasurable books. 
But so far as I have studied them, my impression co- 
incides with those who have examined them more 
largely, and much more minutely, that while he ven- 
erates martyrs, and desires and expects personal aid 
from the prayers of saints, nothing appears in his 
writings of purgatory, of Mariolatry, of confession to 
Priests, or of the papal supremacy ; that he recognizes 
but the two Sacraments of the Church ; and that he 
teaches, with utmost emphasis, dependence upon Christ 
alone for salvation. His acquaintance with the Scrip- 
tures, through the Septuagint version of the Old Testa- 
ment and the Greek Scriptures of the ~New, was 
familiar and profound. Their words are constantly 
on his lips. His style is often saturated with what we 
may call the Biblical idiom ; and in interpretation he 
shows almost always clear sense and discriminating 
judgment. Comparing his expositions of the Scrip- 
ture with those of Bernard, for example, the contrast 
is as great as between a stately and symmetrical tree, 
firmly rooted, proportional and fruitful, and a wild 
vine running at large over rocks, roots, fences, shrubs, 
attaching itself to all sorts of objects with which it 
has no native affinity, and simply at last, by mechan- 

546 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

ical process, hanging its pendent shoots in the air. 
Yet the rich spiritual unction in John is not less 
abundant, spontaneous, inspiring, than it is in Ber- 
nard. His devout feeling is not that which belongs to 
the mystic, a feeling of ecstasy and an intimate rap- 
ture, alternating, perhaps, with occasional ghastly 
fears. His is the robust and deliberate feeling, which 
yet is emotional and intensely impassioned, of one 
dwelling in the vision of highest truths, and knowing 
the touch of God's Spirit upon him, yet conversant 
with men, living in the midst of them, and daily call- 
ing on God in prayer to help him bless them. No 
more practical preacher has ever stood, I am sure, 
upon the earth. Even Gibbon speaks, as you may re- 
member, of his "happy art of engaging the passions 
in the service of virtue, and of exposing the folly as 
well as the turpitude of vice, almost with the truth 
and spirit of a dramatic representation." One cannot 
read any of his discourses without feeling that he 
means to strike sin with all his force, wherever he 
finds it ; whether in empress or handmaid, in soldier 
or slave, in bishop or priest, prefect or philosopher, the 
prelate of the Church or the wandering Scythian. 
The differences of rank or of culture among men are 
to him absolutely of no importance. He means to in- 
spire holiness, if he may, by God's grace assisting, in 
every soul which he reaches — of statesman, harlot, 
heretic, Jew, as well as of Christian, wherever his 
winged words may come. His eloquence is every- 
where modulated and determined by this overmaster- 
ing practical aim, this passion for usefulness. All that 
he had learned in the early study and practice of the 
law, all that he had gained in the assiduous contem- 

547 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

plation of the Greek learning and the Hellenic philos- 
ophy, as well as what he had learned from the 
Scripture, came swinging in, under the grasp of his 
ready memory and of his absolutely inexorable pur- 
pose, to assist this endeavor. He had, as we have 
seen, the quickest eye for every incident in the circum- 
stances around him which might add vividness and 
point to his appeal; and he breasted occasions, of 
whatever nature, with a spirit never confused and 
never shackled by any emergency. In fact, the occa- 
sion, however sudden, whether tragical or triumphant, 
became the real standing-ground for his spirit ; and if 
the earthquakes which more than once had shattered 
Antioch had buried the whole of it except the Church 
and the people there gathered, he would, I am sure, 
have had great lessons for the few who survived ; and 
even the roll of the earthquake itself would hardly 
have drowned the stirring and masterful melody of 
his voice. 

His unbounded facility of expression and illustration 
has seemed, sometimes, to hide from men's thoughts 
his other powers ; but his logic was as forcible as his 
convictions were deep, and through the chains of 
consecutive thought his lightnings flashed. The ardor 
of his soul infused his words ; and his rhetoric was 
never artificially elaborate. It was the very vernacu- 
lar of his mind. He used it because he could not help 
it, without violence to his nature. Sometimes it was 
enriched too profusely, no doubt, for modern or for 
western taste — sentences glittering like clustered 
jewels, where various yet harmonious gems dazzle the 
eye with radiant facets, and sometimes, on the other 
hand, it approached an extravagance wholly un-Hel- 

548 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

lenic in its character ; so that some of the most re- 
markable examples of utterly rough and ready plain- 
speaking to be found in any literature occur in his 
sermons. The stately rhythm, the shining and sinu- 
ous grace of his sentences, marching in general like 
centuries of soldiers, in glittering mail, with banners 
displayed and swell of trumpets, are only more impress- 
ive because broken now and then, in this abrupt and 
startling fashion, by passages which rush in like bar- 
barian cohorts, with clubs and clamor, shaking rude 
spears and dressed in skins. But still, above all, — over- 
ornament, over-ruggedness or plainness of discourse — 
was his courageous and consecrated temper, which 
never feared the face of man; which had in it the 
consciousness of eternal relations, and was inwardly 
familiar with the divine secrets. This poured through 
his speech an incalculable power. Men felt that he 
Jcnew, when he reasoned of righteousness, judgment 
and temperance. It was absolutely known that no 
bribe could corrupt him, and no menaces daunt him. 
Fitly did Dante place him in Paradise between 
Nathan, the seer, and Anselm of England, as one who, 
like them, had never flinched before wrath of kings. 
He stood in his pulpit as one who had communed with 
God, and had felt upon his soul the mystery of the 
Cross ; before whom loomed the near Eternity, with 
its tremendous admonitions ; on whom was already 
the majesty and the tenderness of the temper celes- 
tial. And so his words were living things. They are 
so still. There is a marvelous modernness in his ser- 
mons. So far as form is concerned, they might have 
been preached last year, or this, in Boston or in 
Brooklyn, if anybody had been able to preach them, 

549 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

and if any congregation had understood Greek ; and 
no man can read them, after so many ages, in our far 
lands, without feeling that he who shot these shafts, 
who bore up souls on these mighty instructions, or 
who comforted and exalted with these divine consola- 
tions, lived the life which he lived in the flesh by the 
faith of the Son of God ; that he had dwelt in the 
secret places of God's pavilion ; that not even in Paul 
had conviction been deeper, or vision clearer of that 
which is above, consecration more complete, affection 
more loyal, zeal more intense. One does not marvel 
at the effects produced by his sermons at Antioch or 
Byzantium ; that the heathen were converted in num- 
bers uncounted ; that disciples were lifted to wholly 
new levels of enthusiastic conviction; that heretics 
were won. One does not wonder that his name ever 
since has risen as a refulgent banner above the early 
march of the Church.. His enforced coronation as 
patriarch in the imperial capital ; the desperate fight 
which, in the pure severity of his conscience, he there 
waged to the last against lust and license in Church 
and in court ; his exile and death, which gave him, in 
fact, the martyr's crown, but which gave a blow to 
Christian morality and to Church discipline, from 
which the Church in Constantinople never recovered ; 
these have added both pathos and luster to his fame 
in the world. They commend him. now to our rever- 
ent love. But wholly apart from either of these, it 
seems to me that no one can study his sermons, even 
in his earliest period, without recognizing in him per- 
haps the greatest preacher of the world since the day 
of Paul's death on the Ostian road ; without feeling 
that to apply the name by which after centuries have 

550 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

loved to describe him, to others among the millions of 
preachers who have followed him in his work, is 
hardly less than to him a reproach or to them a 
sarcasm. 

Of course it was not given to men in that time, any- 
more than in ours, to be equally great in all the pow- 
ers which belong to humanity, or in all the offices 
which these may fulfil. It is as a resplendent preacher 
that John of Antioch has held so long his superb pre- 
eminence.- In other relations he was doubtless sur- 
passed by two, at least, of his Western contemporaries. 
Ambrose of Milan, born and dying a few years before 
him — who had also, like him, been trained to the law 
and exercised in it, and who, almost against his con- 
sent, was suddenly placed by the unanimous and im- 
perative voice of rulers and people in his high Arch- 
bishopric — was not of more zeal and self-forgetfulness 
in his work for the Master, or of more unflinching and 
vehement purpose to further and exalt the authority 
of righteousness ; but he had a greater capacity, no 
doubt, for organization, and the maintenance of dis- 
cipline ; and he fronted the threats of imperial dis- 
pleasure, when imperial power had reached its climax, 
with a more commanding magisterial will. Augus- 
tine, born and dying a little later than Chrysostom, 
was a profounder theologian, and left unquestionably 
a deeper impression on the subsequent conviction and 
thought of Christendom. He is to-day more widely 
known among the thinkers and the peoples who rule 
the world, and his power upon them is more vividly 
recognized. 

But the genius of Chrysostom had its peculiar and 
fascinating splendor. There was not only a corusca- 

551 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

ting sparkle upon it. It had a variety and exuberance 
in it, surpassing that of either of the others. It was 
more subtle, stimulating, various, eager, outflowing 
more naturally into graceful, fervent and picturesque 
speech. He touches hearts more tenderly still, where 
his life is recalled, or his sermons are read. Men feel 
to-day, as far as they know him, an enthusiasm for 
him, hardly equaled, certainly not surpassed, by the 
reverent respect which they pay to the others. The 
threads of gold interwoven by him with the Christian 
history of the first four centuries, add more of luster, 
I am not sure that they add less of strength, to that 
entangled and complex fabric, than do the tougher 
iron fibers inserted by the others. And it may be 
doubted whether to the ultimate culture of Christen- 
dom his contribution will not prove as large. 

At any rate, both they and he illustrate in common, 
though with differences belonging to their respective 
personalities, the intensity of faith in that earlier time, 
and the immortal supremacy of spiritual forces over 
everything physical. Antioch now, as I said at the 
outset, is a town of ruins; its superb architecture 
despoiled and destroyed ; with frequent mosques 
rising in it, but no evident Christian temple ; its com- 
merce dead, its scanty population cowering in mean 
houses, rudely built from ancient remains of palace 
and fortress. Emperor, Empress, and the empire 
which they governed, have equally gone from the 
shores of the Bosphorus, and the Moslem power, fierce 
and sullen, rules where Constantine founded New 
Home. The great eastern metropolis of Chrysostom's 
day has almost disappeared, and a new city has, dur- 
ing the centuries, risen in its place. But the eager, 

552 



JOHN OF ANTIOCH 

faithful, inspiring spirit of him who spoke so long ago, 
at Antioch and Byzantium, still addresses the world. 
His fame is as firm as the mountains around Antioch, 
and as fresh as the spring-grass climbing their slopes. 
His influence is to-day as unwasting as the mingled 
waters on which looks the city, which he hallowed at 
last by eloquence and by suffering. His name is 
among the great lights of History ; one of the stars 
which shall not set, or lose their radiance, in that 
serene, illuminated arch which bends forever over the 
kingdom of God on earth ! 



553 



XII 

COMMERCE AN EDUCATOR OF 
NATIONS 



A Speech made at the One Hundred and Twelfth Anniversary 
Banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, in 
New York City, May 11, 1880, in response to the Toast : Commerce, 
an educator of nations and a constant minister of civilization ; what- 
ever contributes to extend its activity furthers the permanent interests 
of mankind. 



XII 
COMMEKCE AN EDUCATOK OF NATIONS 



Mr. President and Gentlemen : 

It seems to me a capital illustration of the sagacity 
of the merchants of New York, that they have called 
upon one to respond to this toast, in honor of Com- 
merce, who has nothing to do with it ! It is like 
asking a reviewer to criticize a book which he has not 
read ; his judgment is sure to be perfectly impartial. 
For, I suppose that of all classes in the community, 
perhaps that which has least to do in personal contact 
with the affairs of commerce is the clerical class, to 
which I have the pleasure and the honor to belong. 
We have to buy food and raiment, as other people 
do ; now and then to buy books, if we have any 
surplus funds, or if Mr. Appleton or Mr. Scribner 
will give us credit for the amount ; and there our re- 
lations to the system cease. I have known some min- 
isters who, after their parishes had no further use for 
their services, went into business, buying stocks, goods, 
real estate, or, sometimes horses. But I hardly ever 
knew one of them who, so far as the ultimate profit 
was concerned, was not obliged to say for himself 
pretty much what Artemus "Ward, I think, said of 
Mr. Jefferson Davis, that it would have been more 

557 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

than ten dollars in his pocket if he had never been 
born. So we have to leave questions of commerce, 
in its details and particulars, to you, gentlemen, who 
are accustomed to reckon upon the laws of supply 
and demand, and to calculate the balance of trade, as 
the sea-captain calculates the force and direction of 
the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic ; or to statesmen, 
like your distinguished guest upon my left [Secretary 
Sherman], who has had the fortune and the honor, 
in a critical time of the national history, to set in mo- 
tion the languid currents of national industry, to re- 
store and exalt our national credit in the markets of 
the world, and to make the paper promises of our 
Government equivalent to gold. I count that the 
true alchemy : which has a continent for its alembic, 
which has the vast, diversified industries of the land 
for its instruments, and whose only magical words 
have been courage, foresight, and an untarnished 
public faith. 

I am no more of a politician, sir, than I am of a 
merchant. I suppose we all left our politics, with our 
overcoats, in the cloak-room. Mine are there, I know, 
done up in a nice little paper package, which I mean 
to read by and by. I have heard with surprise some 
heretical sentiments of Free Trade to-night. So far 
as I remember, I am an old-fashioned protective-tariff 
Whig. But, politics or no politics, gentlemen, I am 
sure we shall all be glad to feel assured that there will 
be before us a career of wide commercial prosperity, 
whenever the people of this country, by a majority of 
voices, shall apply to your distinguished guest the 
motto of the Empire State, and say to him, "Go 
up higher ! " 

558 



COMMERCE AN EDUCATOR OP NATIONS 

But though one may not know anything about the 
details of Commerce, he may know something of the 
history of it, and of the work it has done in the world. 
I think it is Richter who says that on some faces you 
read a date, and nothing more ; on other faces you 
read a proud and splendid history. So it is with some 
words ; they mean nothing more than they instantly 
convey, in their superficial significance, to the ear. 
Others are associated with great honors and powers, 
with illustrious movements of civilization ; and Com- 
merce is one of these. Yery simple in its elements ; 
the exchange of what I have, and do not need, for 
what another man has, which I desire ; that is the ele- 
ment of it. But think what a history such exchanges 
have had ! The history of commerce is the history of 
mankind in its civilized development. It goes back to 
the time when Abraham made his early investment in 
real estate in the land of Canaan, and paid "four 
hundred shekels of silver, current money with the 
merchant." That is in the book of Genesis, the old- 
est book in the world. It goes back beyond that ; to 
the time when Egypt and India, when Phoenicia and 
Assyria, exchanging with one another, became full of 
enterprise and of traffic. Charlotte Bronte says, in 
one of her letters, that Edinburgh, as compared with 
London, is like a vivid chapter in history compared 
with a dull treatise on political economy. A large 
and vivid history of Commerce, written in the true 
spirit, with a reviving historic imagination as well as 
with sufficient knowledge, would be the most inspiring 
book in secular annals. There is nothing now except 
dull chronicles of detail to take the place of such a 
history, which some time or other must be written. 

559 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

The very word, if you consider its history, is exalted 
out of the commonplace. " Commerce " — it is aro- 
matic with perfume of the spices that have been borne 
between the decks of its argosies ; it rustles with the 
gold brocades that were brought from India to im- 
perial Rome ; it is white and polished with the ivory 
and the pearl of Araby and of Africa ; it gleams with 
the ornaments of gold and gems which the West has 
purchased from Oriental skill and wealth. It is one 
of the most illustrious words in the world ; and its 
history is that of a benign influence constantly exerted 
upon human civilization. 

Of course it has immensely augmented the wealth 
of persons and of peoples. That is not the best thing 
in the world, but it is a good thing, because wealth, 
accumulated and fairly distributed, brings independ- 
ence and public advancement. I suppose that no 
merchants in the world to-day are richer, relatively to 
their time, than were the Fuggers of Augsburg, that 
old Bavarian city, sprung from weavers, whose chil- 
dren and grandchildren wedded with princes; who 
had their ships in both hemispheres, floating on all 
seas ; who made enormous loans to Emperors ; one of 
whom is said to have burned a large bond of the 
Emperor Charles Y in a fire of cinnamon wood, when 
the Emperor did him the honor to pay him a visit. 
Perhaps you, gentlemen of New York, will burn your 
bonds, now that you have Secretary Sherman among 
you. 

Mere wealth is commonplace. But remember that 
Augsburg was almost the first city in the world to buy 
its freedom from the Dukes of Suabia. It will be 
three hundred and fifty years next month (June, 

560 



COMMERCE AN EDUCATOR OF NATIONS 

1530), since there was published the Protestant Con- 
fession of Augsburg; and. twenty-five years after 
was issued there the first imperial edict which gave 
liberty of worship on the continent. This was the 
effect of Commerce, and of the wealth of Commerce, 
working towards freedom. 

Think of the powers which it has trained; the 
powers of those who have afterward become dis- 
tinguished in the service of the State. Eemember 
the Medici family, illustrious in government for cen- 
turies, and in the patronage of art ; Colbert, the poor 
boy of Rheims, Finance Minister of Louis XIV; 
N/ecker, the father of Mme. De Stael ; Lafitte ; Rich- 
ard Cobden, the manufacturer of Manchester, the 
Apostle of free trade, whom Sir Robert Peel, himself 
the son of a Lancashire cotton-spinner, eulogized in 
Parliament as having compelled the repeal of the 
corn laws in England. Think of John Hancock, in 
our' own country, whose signature comes first be- 
neath the Declaration of Independence, companion 
of Otis and Sam Adams, whom Governor Gage com- 
mended, more than by knighthood, to the honor of 
every American heart, when he excepted him, person- 
ally and paticularly, from the offer of pardon, be- 
cause his offenses against monarchy had been too out- 
rageous to be overlooked. I rejoice to remember that 
he was the son of a Braintree minister. I rejoice, in 
this company, to remember that he was, as well, your 
brother-merchant. 

Think, too, of the expansion of the knowledge of 
mankind concerning the globe, which is due to Com- 
merce, exploring the seas centuries before this conti- 
nent was dreamed of, gathering to itself the treasures 

JJ 561 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

of Central and of Eastern Asia, and, in seeking a 
quicker route to the Indies, picking up this continent 
out of the waste of waters. You and I owe it to Com- 
merce that we have our home on these fertile and 
delightful shores. Now it is exploring Africa, to 
bring all the secrets of that dark continent into the 
light ; now, by its hardy pioneers, it is pushing its way 
through the icy barriers that gird the pole. Commerce 
it is, that has done this. 

Think of the marvelous inventions which are due to 
it. The mariner's compass, the steam-engine, the 
telegraph — they are children of Commerce, as well as 
its servants and allies. It is Commerce that flings the 
chains of its .railways over the continents, and drives 
the channel through the rocky roots of the mountains, 
along which its trains of traffic are to slide. It is 
Commerce which has opened a liquid highway across 
the Isthmus of Suez, and which is now looking upon the 
snow-capped Cordilleras, on the Isthmus of Panama, 
and saying to them, "You have had a good 
time up there, ever since the earth was made round ; 
but there is not room for you and me both upon 
this planet, so please prepare to subside." 

You remember the little boy traveling who asked 
his mother, " What is a junction ? " "A junction ! 
why, do n't you know what a junction is ? A junction 
is a place w.here two roads separate." Hereafter, 
when the future geographer is asked the question, 
"What is an isthmus, the answer will have to be, " It 
is a place where two oceans are joined." It is Com- 
merce that has made the globe so much smaller than 
it was, to one who wishes to put a girdle round it. 

Think, too, how its influence has served political 

562 



COMMERCE AN EDUCATOR OF NATIONS 

freedom, from, the beginning. It really broke down 
the feudal system. It gave the means, and it gave in 
part the inspiration, to the Hollanders, in that tre- 
mendous struggle of eighty years against the ap- 
parently omnipotent power of Spain, which is the 
real romance of the modern history of the world. 
It is Commerce that has advanced steadily and tri- 
umphantly the liberties of England, while it has 
been making its flag eminent, if not supreme, on 
every sea of the world. It is Commerce, to-day, gen- 
tlemen, that is unifying all the time the magnificent 
peninsula of Italy — the internal commerce of the 
renowned capitals of that great land, binding it 
together as no laws or diplomacy could. Think of it 
in its international relations. The Hanseatic League 
marked the beginning of its influence on modern inter- 
national law. The eighty-three cities combined to put 
down piracy on the rivers and seas, making the 
German Ocean safe, making the Baltic safe. It is 
Commerce which is now mitigating the horrors of 
war, limiting its frequency ; which has put down 
piracy ; which has abolished the slave trade ; which 
will have abolished privateering, when other countries 
shall have adopted the principle of our country, that all 
private goods upon the seas, except they be contraband of 
war, shall be as safe from seizure in time of war as if they 
were in the homestead, or in the sheltered and guarded 
streets of cities ; and it is looking now for Courts of Ar- 
bitration to take the place among nations of the bloody 
and desperate arbitrament of battle. 

Then, too, think of it in its relation to the spread 
of Christianity, as bringing Christian nations nearer to 
the barbarous or the semi-civilized, and giving them 

563 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

always more prominence and power. He who never 
trod the deck of a ship larger than the fishing-boat of 
the Sea of Galilee, is sending His messages to the world 
at this moment on thousands of keels, whose sails are 
spread by the impulse and propelled by the breath 
of Commerce. Whenever the future of the race for 
which we look shall be realized, and mankind shall 
be white in His holiness, glorious through His grace, 
Commerce will have been the great secular instru- 
ment for securing and hastening that radiant and 
immortal result. 

Gentlemen, these are the real trophies of that great 
profession of which you are members. I remember to 
have seen in the jewel office in Vienna the crown 
which Napoleon I wore as King of Lombardy — not 
the one with which he crowned himself, but the one 
which he wore on State occasions ; brilliant and 
splendid, and every stone in it reputed to be false ! 
I thought as I looked upon it, that it was an illustration 
of the character and the career of the charlatan Em- 
peror. Every stone in the majestic and brilliant crown 
of Commerce, which I have thus outlined before you, 
is as genuine as it is large and lustrous. 

Then remember that this vital, expansive interest 
has in it the prophecy of a great future. Commercial 
nations always grow more prominent in the world. 
Commercial cities always become more prominent in 
nations ; London, Liverpool, Manchester, in England ; 
Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, in France ; New York, 
Chicago, San Francisco, in the United States. Com- 
mercial men become more prominent in the national 
councils. Here, around me, on either side, are men 
who have taken high and honorable part in the dis- 

564 



COMMERCE AN EDUCATOR OF NATIONS 

cussion and the decision of great State questions in 
our National Legislature, for whom this City, on 
either side of the river, may well maintain, as it does 
maintain, respect, admiration, confidence and honor. 
I rejoiced to see the statement the other day, in 
some English paper, that of the newly elected mem- 
bers of Parliament — 257 in all — 150 were merchants, 
or professionally connected with Commerce. And 
there is no member of that Parliament who can 
surpass, few who can equal, that eloquent, intrepid, 
far-sighted statesman, the friend of his own coun- 
try, the friend of America, the friend of the world, 
the manufacturer and merchant, John Bright ; while 
at the head of all is that man of unmatched elo- 
quence and energy, at the age of seventy years, 
who treats finance in the spirit of a philosopher, 
who treats all national affairs in the temper of a 
philanthropist and a Christian, to whom America 
will give, if he ever comes to these shores, such a 
welcome as she would offer to no other living man, 
whose eminence in England now causes a thrill of joy 
to every true and humane heart throughout the world, 
the son of a Liverpool merchant, whose family name 
he has made illustrious in history as long as the history 
of England continues to be written or to be read — Mr. 
Gladstone. 

Gentlemen, these are great examples. "We may not, 
any of us, rival them. But I remember those words 
of Lord Bacon, in his preface to the Maxims of the 
Law : " I hold every man a debtor to his profession ; 
that as from it he derives profit and consequence, so 
he should ever endeavor to make amends, by being to 
it a helper and an ornament." I have thought those 

565 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

words an appropriate motto for the study of any min- 
ister; and I know no human words more worthy to 
be inscribed, in letters of gold, as a legend on every 
counting room in New York. 



566 



XIII 
FOREFATHERS' DAY 



A Speech made at the Dinner of the New England Society in the 
City of New York, in Commemoration of the Two Hundred and Six- 
tieth Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims, December 22, 
1880, in response to the Toast, "The Day We Celebrate." 



XIII 
FOKEFATHEKS' DAY 



Me. President, Gentlemen of the New Eng- 
land Society — and, we may all rejoice to add, see- 
ing this cloud of witnesses by which we are sur- 
rounded, Ladies and Gentlemen, making this day of our 
celebration memorable in the annals of the Society : — 
I confess to a certain embarrassment in making any 
remarks upon the theme which has been suggested by 
the sentiment read by the President, because of a cer- 
tain indefinite expansiveness which belongs to it. I 
believe it was Sir Joshua Reynolds who said of 
Eubens that his genius expanded with his canvas, so 
that his largest pictures were always his best. I re- 
member certain canvases of the great master in the 
Louvre, in the Lichtenstein gallery of Vienna, and in 
the gallery of the Pinakothek at Munich which lead 
me to doubt whether that was altogether true, even 
of him. Certainly it is not true of humbler artists ; 
and I think that the more limited the subject is, the 
easier it is for one to talk about it. Being launched 
into a theme as vast as this, one feels that he may be in 
danger as the wandering Indian was on the prairie, 
who, when asked if he was lost, said : " No, Indian all 
right ; wigwam lost." 

At the same time I remember what eloquent voices 

569 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

nave spoken in response to this sentiment, in other 
years : the voice of our distinguished fellow-citizen, so 
long identified with this Society, and who has been 
recognized not only as amongst the foremost of Amer- 
ican lawyers, but for the last four years as our wise, 
patriotic, and indefatigable Secretary of State; the 
voice of him who, spoke last year, not here, but in the 
meeting of the Society, whose inimitable grace and 
felicity of manner and of expression might almost hide 
from us, not his large and generous culture, but the 
sound and tonic strength of the thought which he im- 
presses — that accomplished and knightly scholar in 
politics, Mr. Curtis. One dreads to follow such men, 
even after the interval of a year. 

Tet, fortunately, the theme is its own advocate and 
its own orator ; and I have only to see to it that I do 
not stand, for more than a few minutes, between it 
and yourselves. 

Some days are memorable by reason of that which 
has gone into them, of the great histories which are 
behind them. The cathedral recently completed on 
the banks of the Rhine represents in consummate 
flower the work of six and a quarter centuries, the 
genius that so long ago shaped it in plan, the labor 
that during all that time, more or less, has been at 
work robbing the stone of its weight, and building it 
into that visible music in the air. When Yictor Em- 
manuel entered the city of the Caesars ten years ago — 
ten years ago next week — six months before his more 
public entry, but when already he was hailed as King 
of United Italy, the tendencies of six hundred years 
were represented in the fact that he was in the palace 
of the Quirinal. Back behind Cavour, and Ricasoli, 

570 



FOREFATHERS' DAY 

and Garibaldi, and La Marmora, went those tenden- 
cies, to the age of Dante and beyond, which there 
bloomed into exhibition. When our International 
Exhibition was opened in Philadelphia, in 1876, it rep- 
resented a hundred years of peaceful industry and 
profitable invention, of growing taste and augmented 
opulence, the result of the freedom which the Kepub- 
lic had enjoyed during all that century of time. 
When the Exposition opens, as we hope it will, in New 
York two or three years hence, it will be significant 
of the same thing. New York seems to hesitate be- 
fore it more than Philadelphia did — stammers more, 
to speak the word, because it is a larger city perhaps. 
By and by it will come. When it comes it will repre- 
sent all this growth and splendid attainment of the 
completed century. 

Some days are memorable by reason of that which 
flows from them, of the great and fruitful histories 
which they initiate. We celebrate thus the birthday 
of Washington in this country, making the twenty- 
second of February a red-letter day in American let- 
ters and American life, because then that majestic 
spirit touched the planet, on whose wisdom and forti- 
tude, on whose majestic strength, rested afterward the 
hope and destiny of the Eepublic ; who gave to the 
world perhaps the most vital and enduring gift which 
America thus far has produced, in that illustrious and 
unsurpassed character of the great statesman and 
patriot. We celebrate other days for that which 
has come out of them. I hope a few years hence we 
shall celebrate in this city, with appropriate cere- 
monial, the hundredth anniversary of the meeting 
of the first Congress under the Constitution, in Fed- 

571 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

eral Hall, in the month of March; and certainly the 
inauguration of the first President — Washington — 
on the 30th of April, 1789, by whom was com- 
menced that series of American Presidents of whom 
we have one of the most recent and illustrious present 
to-night. • 

A thing need not be great, even in appearance, to 
be worthily celebrated. If any one can find the day 
on which the needle first trembled on its poise, seek- 
ing the north, and liberating the commerce of the 
world from the headlands and coasts to which it had 
been tied ; if any one can find the day on which the 
movable type first came into the grasp of human fin- 
gers, to be the lever to lift the world nearer the throne 
of G-od ; if anybody can find the day when the wire 
first thrilled with that impulse of articulate thought 
which now is making neighbors of the most distant 
nations — it were well to celebrate such days. It was 
the birth of a Babe in a Jewish manger which opened 
the new era of Christendom. It is by such tiny and 
seemingly inconsiderable instruments that that Babe, 
now Sovereign Lord of the earth, is carrying forward 
his shining banners to the ends of the world. We 
should celebrate such, not for their splendor, but for 
the immense consequences which have ever since 
flowed from them. 

It is the special honor of the day which we celebrate 
to-night that it is memorable for both these reasons — 
for that which went before it, and for that which came 
out of it. It is not a day to be remembered merely 
on account of the few voyagers who landed on Plym- 
outh Kock. There was behind them the whole mag- 
nificent age of Elizabeth: the age illustrious in the 

572 



FOREFATHERS' DAY 

world of philosophy and science by the name of Bacon ; 
the age fascinating to everybody who admires chivalry 
in character and in action by the name of Sidney ; 
fascinating to all who love high qualities of leadership, 
in adventure, in letters, in politics, in war, by the 
name of Raleigh ; the age which bears upon its shield, 
as it marches among the centuries of historic fame, 
the unmatched blazon of the name of Shakespeare. 
Out of that age came Hampden, came Milton, came 
John Selden, came the great Petition of Right. Out 
of that age came the Plymouth Colony, just as dis- 
tinctly and directly as if Drake had commanded the 
Mayflower, and Raleigh had steered the ship. 

"We remember all that, when we celebrate this day. 
Men may say that it was an inconsiderable event. 
Yes ! but it was not the eccentric adventure of a few 
forlorn persons and families seeking another home 
beyond the sea. The swing of the English spirit 
which had fought and crushed the Armada was be- 
hind it. 

You open the story of that day, and it is like open- 
ing the side door of a palace, through which one looks 
into corridors that are brilliant with lights, resounding 
with music, and grand with the presence of gallant men 
and lovely women. That is the day which we cele- 
brate, for w T hat went before it. 

Then for the result that has come after ; for it was 
not an inert piece of a formed continent which came 
over here in the Mayflower, like that obelisk that 
creeps up to its place — if anybody knows where its 
place is to be — in Central Park, at about the same 
rate at which a glacier slips from its mountain-slopes 
into the meadows. This colony, whose coming we 

573 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

celebrate, was a sheet of fire-mist flung out from the 
Old World, that the lew World might be rounded 
out of it. Of course not out of it altogether ; because 
when we are met here we do not forget those who 
came earlier than our fathers. 

You remember that Dr. Bethune said, to some one 
who was praising too highly, as he thought, his own 
communion in his presence, that justice to his own de- 
nomination required him to say that he presumed all 
Christians would be Eeformed Dutchmen in heaven. 
We may not be entirely sure of that, perhaps, but 
we never can think of the Dutch colonists who landed 
on the island on which we are gathered without 
a feeling of admiration and pride, for the history 
which was behind them, and out of which they came. 
When Hendrick Hudson dropped his anchor in yonder 
bay in September, 1609, when the New Netherland 
charter was granted by the States General in 1614, a 
great nationality touched our shores. I never think 
of that country, I never could look upon it when I was 
within it, without admiration and honor for that 
which had been there achieved. A swampy morass, 
half as large again in extent as the State of New Jer- 
sey, built out of the mud which the rivers had brought 
down from the higher lands, absolutely owned by the 
German Ocean, which was only kept back from taking 
possession of it by the dikes that are said to have cost 
fifteen hundred millions of dollars : — on that swampy 
land they had built great and wealthy cities ; civic pal- 
aces unsurpassed in the world ; great churches, solid as 
mountains, and with their spires fine as Mechlin lace. 
They had built universities ; they had trained great 
scholars ; they had sent Erasmus to Oxford, to teach 

574 



FOREFATHERS' DAY 

Greek, a hundred years before ; they then had Gro- 
tius, theologian, statesman, ambassador, historian, poet, 
jurist, all in one. They had had public schools, the 
first in Europe. They had given the model of a re- 
public two hundred years before our Republic was 
formed. They gave the model of our Declaration of 
Independence at the Hague in 1581, and the model of 
the American Union before that at Utrecht in 1579. 
Never should we forget how much this country owes 
to the representatives of Holland. It was from the 
combined qualities of the English father and the Dutch 
mother that New York derived her illustrious states- 
man, De Witt Clinton ; and it is from a similar com- 
bination of the qualities of the Dutch and the English 
that New York City and New York State have taken 
their splendid power and fame. 

Other nations are represented among us also. Last 
evening I had the privilege of presiding at a meeting 
in this city to say farewell to a distinguished French- 
man returning to his own country, and it was freshly 
recalled to my mind how much we owed to that 
Huguenot blood represented by Boudinot and Laurens, 
by Jay and Bowdoin and Marion, and many others. 
Then there are the Scotch and the Scotch-Irish, the 
Germans, the Swedes, the Danes, and the Irish, who 
have poured in later in multitudes upon us, with their 
vivacity, their strong muscle and vivid fancy, their 
enthusiasm, foremost at the feast and foremost in bat- 
tle, and foremost in filling nearly every office or place 
of trust in the land. 

The fact is, Mr. President and Gentlemen, that when 
we come to say what our nationality is, we are very 
much in the condition of the man on whom the census 

575 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

enumerator called, asking what his nationality was. 
" That," said the man, " is just what I have been try- 
ing all my life to find out. My father was English, 
my mother was French. I was born on a Dutch ship, 
sailing under a Spanish flag, and trading in Turkish 
waters. NTow what am I ? " But this great and ex- 
uberant American life is grander because it is com- 
posed, • as the sunshine is, of many strands, woven 
together — not of one. We do not forget the others 
combined with us when we meet to celebrate the day 
when our fathers landed; and the results are all 
around us of that complete, composite life. 

They are in the industry which fills the land, to 
which our fathers contributed something, certainly, 
with their practical energy, determined to get the hid- 
den riches of God's earth out of it, and to make the 
planet conform itself to the fashion which He would 
have it wear in the final day ; in the restless enter- 
prise which carried them everywhere ; in the old- 
fashioned love of Saxon freedom, which should com- 
bine order with liberty, making permanent institutions 
the guarantee of individual right ; in the spirit, founded 
on great convictions, which they propagated to those 
who came after. They contributed to the industry 
which raises crops at the West so heavy that they say 
sometimes the prairie sinks ten inches under the bur- 
den ; filling the air, too, with the whirl of machinery ; 
sending commerce wherever commerce goes ; founding 
the institutions of the government so solidly that they 
cannot be shaken. 

I used to sit last summer at my window on the 
northwest side of the White Mountains, and watch the 
storm coming up the eastern valley, breaking upon 

576 



FOREFATHERS' DAY 

the mountain, with its great buttresses of rock, in 
flame and thunder, with gusts of wind and rain, as if 
it would sweep the mountain from its base. The 
storm dispersed, and the old peak was there, un- 
troubled, vast, and glorious as ever. Civil war broke 
on our national government, and it seemed for a 
time as if it would destroy it. The American spirit 
was too strong for it. The government remained 
in its security, thanks to these distinguished sol- 
diers who are with us to-night, and thanks to the 
eminent statesmen who cooperated with them. I 
used to watch there the undulations of the clouds 
gathering around the mountain peak, portending 
storm ; and, as they rocked back and forth beneath 
the impulse of the wind, by a trick upon the eye 
they made it seem as if the very peak itself, peering 
above, were rocking and swaying in the wind. We 
go through our four years' debate, and it seems as if 
the country were in peril, and as if the government 
itself were insecure. The debate is ended, the clouds 
disperse, and the government is there, only refreshed, 
purified and exalted by all the stress and strain of 
the debate through which the people, whose it is, 
have been passing. That is the result of this com- 
posite American life to which our fathers gave one 
element, and one important element : and it is joyful 
— it should be — to all of us to know that now this day 
is celebrated over all the continent. Your President 
has a telegram, which he will read to you, no doubt, 
showing its celebration in New Mexico to-night. It 
should be joyful — it is — to all of us to know that it 
will continue to be celebrated as long as the Nation 
itself continues ; as long as the hills of New England 

KK 577 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

stand; as long as the waters continue to beat, in 
volleying thunder or in musical laughter, on the strand 
and the rock which, two hundred years ago, took upon 
them immortal renown. 



578 



XIY 

CONSOLIDATION OF BROOKLYN WITH 
NEW YORK 



A Speech delivered on taking the chair at a Mass Meeting of the 
citizens of Brooklyn favoring Ee-submission of the Question to popular 
vote, held at the Academy of Music, January 19, 1896. 



XIV 

CONSOLIDATION OF BKOOKLYN WITH 
NEW YOKK 



Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow Brooklyn- 
ites: 

I am sure that it will be understood, by all who 
know me, that it is not by any desire or purpose of 
mine that I have this temporary prominence in the 
meeting this evening, gathered to consider so large a 
theme. My very strong preference would have been 
to sit in silence, and to hear what others should say, 
only afterward expressing my judgment in a vote, if 
the opportunity to vote shall ever be given to us. But 
the question which is before us is of such momentous 
importance, concerning not merely the present of 
Brooklyn, but all its future, that I have not felt at 
liberty to avoid or decline the responsibility which 
others have assigned to me. Therefore I am here. 

It is not even a question, to-night, of consolidation 
with New York; but it is the preliminary and the 
more fundamental question — whether Brooklyn is to 
have any deciding voice and vote upon that question. 
It is a question whether a city sixty years old, of a 
million inhabitants and more, is to be moved hither 
and thither, by an external power, without its own 
intelligent and decisive consent. And that is a ques- 

581 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

tion, as it seems to me, to which there can possibly be 
but one answer given by fair-minded men, here or 
anywhere else. 

The State of Utah has just been admitted into the 
Union. A few days ago it was vivid with fireworks, 
and reverberating with the thunder of cannon, be- 
cause, as was there said, "At last two hundred and 
fifty thousand people have a right of self-govern- 
ment ! " Well, I make no objection to that, and have 
no quarrel with it. If they behave themselves, as I 
hope they will, Utah may come by and by to be a 
great state. But here is a population four times as 
large, and certainly quite as intelligent — although the 
married men in it have not hitherto enjoyed the edu- 
cational discipline of more than one wife apiece. 
Is this population to be deprived of self-govern- 
ment, and moved about by politicians in Albany, 
hither and yon, as a blind man is led along by a 
dog ? I think, myself, that some apology is necessary 
for that comparison, but under the existing circum- 
stances, the apology, I am sure, is due to the dog. Of 
course there can be but one answer to that question. 
It is as plain as that the earth is a globe, and not a 
gas ; it is as plain as that this building is a permanent 
structure, and not a transient canvas tent, that we 
must have the right to decide our own destiny as a 
city. And the only possible way to avoid that answer 
is by asserting, as is not infrequently done, that a vote 
has already been taken on the subject, in 1894, and 
that that was a final and decisive vote. Of course the 
facts in regard to that matter are very familiar ; yet 
they will bear to be re-stated, again and again. 

In the first place, it was not a " vote " at all, but 

582 



BROOKLYN WITH NEW YORK 

was expressly declared, in the legislative act, to be 
merely an expression of personal wish, having no legal 
efficacy whatever. That was reaffirmed in the circu- 
lar of the consolidation commission. It was an ex- 
pression preceded by no general discussion; which 
was regarded by a good many as simply a huge public 
joke ; which was regarded by a good many more as 
an entirely unimportant matter, concerning a hypo- 
thetical suggestion, upon which their feeling was of 
no value and would have no effect. Under these cir- 
cumstances men went to the polls. There was a mul- 
tiplicity of ballots — nineteen or twenty — and that was 
very confusing. There was a very limited time for 
selecting the ballots, and depositing them ; and that 
was confusing. There was not the slightest organiza- 
tion on the part of those who did not desire consolida- 
tion with New York. Whether there was any or not 
on the other side, I have no knowledge ; but they who 
objected or doubted were as utterly without intended 
association with each other as are the casual passen- 
gers on a railway train. 

Well ! Under these circumstances, out of a regis- 
tered vote of more than one hundred and ninety-one 
thousand (191,341), and an actual vote for Governor 
of one hundred and seventy-three thousand two hun- 
dred and fifty, (173,250), in the City of Brooklyn as it 
had existed when the act was passed, there was a 
majority of one thousand and more (1,040), against 
consolidation. Taking in the recently annexed vil- 
lages, and particularly the village of Gravesend (a 
name which then steamed to heaven !), there were de- 
clared to be two hundred and seventy-seven (277) pref- 
erences in favor of consolidation. That, in a total 

583 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

registration of more than one hundred and ninety-one 
thousand ; or less than one-sixth of one per cent, of 
the total vote ! And that is declared to be a fair and 
final decision of the matter, on the part of Brooklyn ! 
"Why, gentlemen, one might as well say that this glass 
of water, which stands before me, is an adequate 
representation of the Kidgewood reservoir! You 
might as well say that a two-dollar greenback bill is a 
sufficient representative of a bank-deposit of twenty 
thousand dollars in gold ! I said the other evening, 
in another place, and I say it again, with all the 
emphasis that I can put into the words, that to base 
the extinction of the corporate life of Brooklyn on a 
majority like that, of two hundred and seventy-seven 
in this wholly inadequate expression of popular judg- 
ment, is either an example of the most extraordinary 
trickery in politics, or else it reaches very nearly, if it 
does not wholly attain, the absolute climax of insolent 
audacity. 

No ! Let us have a fair " vote," after a full discus- 
sion ; and let that " vote " be decisive. Let us all un- 
derstand that by it we are to abide, but let us have the 
vote ; and this, more especially, because there are con- 
siderations, on either side, which are certainly of great 
importance, and to which our minds should be 
thoughtfully turned. 

Let us remember, for example, that this is an abso- 
lutely unprecedented thing, this proposed consolida- 
tion of a city of a million and more inhabitants with 
a city of two millions, which is not far from it. It 
has never been done before, in the history of the 
country. Even Chicago, which is as eager for new 
territory as our trolley-car systems are for new 

584 



BROOKLYN WITH NEW YORK 

streets, lias never ventured to propose anything of 
this kind; It is entirely without precedent in our his- 
tory. We should pause before it, and ask if it be 
wise. Perhaps it is, but there is surely a grave ques- 
tion here. A vast city of three millions of people, 
where now there are two cities, widely differing from 
each other in their characteristics, this must have a 
lasting and a mighty bearing on the future of the 
state, on the future of the country. There are binary 
suns in the heavens — my friend on the right [Mr. S. 
V. White] will tell you so, for he has watched them — 
differing in size,, differing in color, differing in weight, 
which as combined hold in equipoise immense celestial 
systems; the absorption of one of which into the 
other would bring a sure celestial catastrophe. We 
should look at this great question fairly, discuss it in- 
telligently, and vote deliberately in regard to it. 

Then it is a question, and a question for every one 
of us, I am sure, whether good permanent government 
is possible in such an immense, shifting, heterogeneous 
population of three millions of people, scattered over 
a wide territory, growing more numerous all the time, 
with a large proportion of recent immigrants, and into 
which the political sewage of Europe is being dumped 
every week. As a general thing, cities become more 
corrupt, and more unmanageable, as they grow larger. 
London, Berlin, Paris, they are governed by the armed 
empires or the armed republic around them, or behind 
them. We have no such resource. Our republic has no 
armed forces with which to contend against organized 
riots in such a city. The government had to mass all its 
available troops at Chicago, in order to subdue a sudden 
furious riot in that locality, eighteen months ago. 

585 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES ' 

Here, then, is the question : "What guarantee have 
we of good, wise, salutary, permanent government of 
this enormous mass of population in this threatened 
big city ? or what guarantee have we, even, that that 
interesting institution— Tammany Hall — is not to be 
the dominating power again in New York? The 
prospects certainly, as I think, point to that ; and we 
may find ourselves under its brutal and criminal dom- 
ination, with remonstrance, no doubt, but certainly 
without any power of -effective resistance. 

Of course, I quite understand that it has been said 
on the other side that there are advantages which will 
counterbalance the possible perils of this consolida- 
tion. It is said, for example, that we are going to 
have reduced taxation. That is simply a " perhaps " ! 
I have not had the pleasure very often of agreeing on 
political lines with our distinguished fellow-citizen, 
Mr. McLaughlin, though I have voted for his candi- 
date for Mayor more than once, I am sorry to say 
not always with entirely satisfactory results; but I 
take him to be a shrewd, sagacious, clear-headed 
man, in matters of finance ; and I observe that if he 
is correctly represented he does not expect taxes to be 
reduced by consolidation, but increased. I think he 
is right. The tax-rate in New York is rising steadily, 
and rapidly ; and the people there are just about in- 
curring, as an entirely incidental thing, a debt of from 
seventy-five to one hundred millions of dollars for an 
underground railroad, to cost, in the end, nobody 
knows how much ! All that will have to be paid for ; 
and the interest on it will have to be paid ; an amount 
which of itself doubles the entire sum of our munici- 
pal funded debt which has been accumulating for 

586 



BROOKLYN WITH NEW YORK 

a long series of years. And all the time this road 
will be of no more use to the City of Brooklyn 
than would be street-cars in Labrador. The entire 
effect of it will be, whether that be intended or not, 
to pull people away from Kings County, and land 
them somewhere up in the wilds of Westchester. 
In becoming incorporated with JSTew York we shall 
have to face that; and if there is anybody here 
who wants to place his house and property under 
the shadow of that avalanche, and then whistle to 
it to come down, all that I can say is, that he may 
have my chance ! 

It is said further that the price of real estate is go- 
ing to rise here, in connection with consolidation. I 
want to look into that question, also, before deciding 
to cast my vote in favor of the measure. So far as I 
have observed, the prices of real estate, for residence 
purposes, depend largely if not chiefly upon the set of 
the fashion ; and you cannot change the courses of 
fashion by changing the name of a district by legal 
enactment, any more than you can change the course 
of the wind by opening an umbrella. Whether a 
population will flow in one direction or an other is 
independent of any possible act of a legislature. 
The only practicable way to make Brooklyn a fash- 
ionable place of residence, for people of the sort 
that we want, is to make it attractive because replete 
with fine institutions, with everything that intelligent 
men and women desire in the city of their homes ; to 
make it so attractive that it shall be fashionable for 
every one to live in it except the billionaires ; and, if 
the worst comes to the worst, we must try hard to get 
along without them. 

587 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

But it is said that we cannot have money enough for 
our municipal purposes without consolidation; that 
that is necessary to furnish us with the funds which 
we need as a city. We always have had enough here- 
tofore ; and will anybody tell me what guarantee we 
have that New York will be actively interested in the 
improvement and embellishment of Brooklyn, when it 
has absorbed us into itself ? 

Here is one great object-lesson plainly before us : — 
our dear and honored friend, Mr. Stranahan, whose 
name will be familiar and eminent in the annals of 
Brooklyn so long as they continue to be written — who 
gave to the consolidation commission about all the 
dignity that it ever has had on this side of the river 
— was the president of the Park commission thirty- 
six years' ago, in the early part of 1860, in the por- 
tentous year which preceded the war. The popula- 
tion of the City of Brooklyn, at that time, was three 
hundred thousand ; and the estimated and the realized 
cost of the real estate taken for the park area was 
three and one-half millions of dollars. The next year 
came the crash of the civil war, with the annihilation 
of many forms of productive industry ; with the wide 
paralysis of trade and commerce; with the bloody 
riots in New York against the government ; with the 
tremendous destruction of property and of life all over 
the country. The war went on ; and the work went 
on, on yonder heights, under this admirable, far- 
sighted and tranquil leader ; until, before he had left 
the work, it had cost nearly ten millions of dollars, 
every single dollar of which had been honestly, 
economically and fruitfully expended ! Now, I should 
like to know if there are any men, outside of an insane 

588 



BROOKLYN WITH NEW YORK 

asylum or of an asylum, for idiots, who imagine that 
Cherry Street and Mulberry Street, the Tenderloin dis- 
trict, or even Fifth Avenue and Madison Square, would 
have looked with enthusiasm on that prospective ex- 
penditure of ten millions of dollars for a remote sec- 
tion of their city, containing three hundred thousand 
people ! We might just as well have asked them to 
take part with us in building an elevated railroad to 
the Straits of Gibraltar; and I do not know why 
they are to be expected hereafter to be actively inter- 
ested in the improvement and the embellishment of 
this City of Brooklyn, as it is now, and as it is un- 
doubtedly to be in the future. I do not know 
whether they would have agreed, even, to the re- 
cent expenditure of the four millions of dollars, last 
year and this year, for that extension of our park 
system which is to make it one of the very finest in 
all the country. 

My friends, there is a very clear Biblical precedent, 
and a very energetic precept founded upon it, against 
"selling one's birthright for a mess of pottage." 
Let us be careful in this case that we don't sell our 
birthright, and wholly fail to get our pottage ! Let 
us ourselves make Brooklyn, as we have done in the 
past, with all its beauty, its manifold attractiveness, 
with its noble civic life, and with all the resources 
which people who come here desire, and let us glory 
in the work which it is thus permitted us to do ! 

I know it is said sometimes that no " sentiment " is 
appropriate to the discussion of this case. But, my 
dear friends, " sentiment " is merely judgment on fire ; 
and if our judgment is that we should not be incor- 
porated with New York then put the heart-fire into it 

589 



ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES 

and that is " sentiment." There is sentiment con- 
cerning home — your home, and my home ; there is 
sentiment concerning one's country, and patriotism 
stirred is a tremendous passion. Everybody is not 
built like the man who went into the Independence 
Hall in Philadelphia and to whom the guide said, 
"Here is the place where Washington received his 
commission." " Did he, really ? Well, now, can you 
tell me what percentage he got on that commission ? " 

Let the financial case stand by itself, and then let 
sentiment come in, on its own motion, and in its own 
right ; and above all, cast out of your own breast, and 
out of the minds of others if you can reach them, that 
dastardly sentiment which says, " Kismet ! " " Fate ! " 
" It is bound to come ! " Bound to come ? Yes, if 
we want it ! Bound to come ? Perhaps, if we are 
supine in regard to it ; but if we reject and resist it, 
then it is no more " bound to come " than Albany and 
Troy on opposite sides of the river are bound to be 
consolidated, or St. Paul and Minneapolis on opposite 
sides of the great river in the West. 

Let the future of Brooklyn remain in the hands 
of the people of Brooklyn ! That is the keynote of 
the whole business ! If Brooklyn people desire to 
have its identity destroyed, and its name effaced, 
that it be known hereafter in the world as the " Sou'- 
Sou'-East-by-Sou'-District of New York," then let 
it be ; but let us decide that question for ourselves ! 
And let us say frankly to any political party : If you 
will not allow the people of Brooklyn to decide this 
matter for themselves, and for their children, by in- 
telligent discussion and by decisive vote, then, no 
matter what your name has been in the past, no mat- 

590 



BROOKLYN WITH NEW YORK 

ter what the history of your previous exploits has 
been, you are doomed to hopeless disaster on this 
ground, for all time to come ! And let us say to 
every politician : You may be the shrewdest wire- 
puller who ever managed a caucus, or set a candidate 
in the field ; you may be even a candidate yourself, 
and seem to be not very far from reaching a very high 
office in the gift of the nation ; but if you are deter- 
mined to force consolidation, with the extinction of 
Brooklyn as a separate city, through a distant body, 
by political manipulation, without referring it to the 
people of Brooklyn themselves — then, even if some of 
us have to say, "I love thee, Cassio," as surely as 
nightfall follows noon, we shall have to add, " But 

NEVER MORE BE OFFICER OF MINE ! " 



591 






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